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3. Wild Foods
(Conversation between John Lawrence and Chris Brown)
JL: (1) Say that I'm eating angleworms with acorn mush, I'm eating
angleworms with biscuits, say that.
CB: (2) You do the talking. Where can I get angleworms when I go
fishing?
JL: (3) Right in front here, in the flat ground.
CB: (4) I want to get some angleworms.
JL: (5) I can eat angleworms with biscuits, you'd better say that.
CB: (6) I can eat angleworms with biscuits, sir. (7) Tell me if you
ever ate any.
JL: (8) No.
CB: (9) When is it that edible cocoons will come out, sir?
JL: (10) What's that?
CB: (11) Cocoons.
JL: | } (laughter) |
CB: |
* * *
CB: (39) This is my older brother,' he came out from the east; we are people from the mountains, Yosemite Valley people. We are the only ones left alive, isn't that right, sir.
———
1Although John Lawrence and Chief Leeme may have been related, they were
not literally brothers; this statement probably refers to membership in the same
moiety. John Lawrence did not otherwise claim to belong to the Yosemite Valley
band; even here, his agreement with Chief Leeme is a little reluctant.
JL: (40) That's right.
CB: (41) There's nobody else.
JL: (42) No.
CB: (43) Nobody left.
JL: (44) (uh-huh).
CB: (45) Maybe there isn't anyone now who could keep up with us.
JL: (46) Nobody.
CB: (47) That can call himself that.
JL: (48) Surely not, nobody.
CB: (49) Playing that, what did we used to do?
JL: (50) (uh-huh), yes.
CB: (51) They want to listen to this one that the Indian women used
to play.
JL: (52) Oh, those things.
CB: (53) How did they do those things?
JL: (54) They used to shake dice in their hands.
CB: (55) They used to shake them [in a box], these dice.
JL: (56) All of it, playing dice, playing football, all sorts of things
they used to play. Long ago, that was what the women used to play.
CB: (57) The women used to play that.
JL: (58) (uh-huh); they used to play handgame at night.
CB: (59) Just the women.
JL: (60) Just the women, that's the way I saw it.
CB: (61) We've all seen that.
JL: (62) (uh-huh).
CB: (63) The women used to play this on something, too, on bone awls,
isn't it.
JL: (64) They used to play that too, on those little awls or something,
yes.
CB: (65) Yes, and this too, weaving.
JL: (66) They used to weave baskets.
CB: (67) That's it, sir, their baskets.
JL: (68) They used to make baskets.
CB: (69) Yes.
JL: (70) They used to do basketry, cooking baskets, carrying baskets,
hey:
CB: (71) Hey, that's it, that what the Indians did, lots of them. Where
are they now? There aren't any, they're all dead.
JL: (72) They're all gone that could do that kind of work.
CB: (73) They used to like this, cracking these, to eat this . . . that . . .
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