When pressed very hard by famine they would eat their dogs (their only domestic animal) and even the leather of the skins with which they clothed themselves.

In the autumn they were much given to fishing for eels, and they dried a good deal of eel flesh, to last them through the winter.

During the height of the winter they hunted the beaver, and later on the elk.

Though they ate wild roots and fruits whenever they could obtain them, they do not seem to have cultivated any grain or vegetables.

In the early spring they were sometimes dying of hunger, and looked so thin and haggard that they were mere walking skeletons.