CHAPTER Four.
SOURCES OF FOOD SUPPLY.
The food supply of the Sierra Indians was extensive and abundant, consisting of the flesh of deer, antelope, elk and mustang horses, together with fish, water-fowls, birds, acorns, berries, pine nuts, esculent herbage and the tuberous roots of certain plants, all of which were easily obtained, even with their simple and limited means of securing them.

Mushrooms, fungi, grasshoppers, worms and the larvae of ants and other insects, were also eaten, and some of these articles were considered great delicacies.
HUNTING.
Their main effective weapons for hunting large game were their bows and obsidian-pointed arrows.

Their manner of hunting was either by the stealthy still hunt, or a general turn-out, surrounding a large area of favorable country and driving to a common center, where at close range the hunters could sometimes make an extensive slaughter.
[Illustration: _Drawing by Jorgensen._ A YOSEMITE HUNTER.
He wears a false deer's head, to deceive the game.] When on the still hunt for deer in the brushy, sparsely timbered foothills of the Sierra Range of mountains, or higher up in the extensive forests, some of the hunters wore for a headgear a false deer's head, by which deceptive device they were enabled to get to a closer and more effective range with their bows and arrows.

This head-dress was made of the whole skin of a doe's head, with a part of the neck, the head part stuffed with light material, the eyeholes filled in with the green feathered scalp of a duck's head, and the top furnished with light wooden horns, the branching stems of the manzanita (_Arctostaphylos_) being generally used for this purpose.

The neck part was made to fit on the hunter's head and fasten with strings tied under the chin.
This unique style of headgear was used by some Indian hunters for many years after they had guns to hunt with.
[Illustration: _Drawing by Jorgensen_ INDIAN SWEAT HOUSE.
Used by the Yosemite hunters before starting after game.] The high ranges of the mountains, as already stated, were considered common hunting ground by the different tribes.