Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1879 — Grasshopper Gruel. [ARTICLE]

Grasshopper Gruel.

In Sierra and Martis Valleys the Indian huts can be seen and in and around them are congregated the warriors and squaws of the tribe, their sisters and their cousins and their aunts, all intent Upon the accomplishment of the grand result. As usual, the squaws do the work, while their noble lords 101 l upon the greensward, smoke their pipes, and dreamily an d lazily gaze upon the countless myriads of buzzing hoppers that fill the air and devour vegetation. The squaws, carrying cone-shaped baskets of great capacity, scoop the grasshoppers with a fan-ehap- \ ed instrument into their baskets. And . when loaded carry the wiggling mass of insects to camp, and then prepare them for food. The grasshoppers, killed and subsequently dried, are mixed with mashed pine nuts or cracked wheat and made into a kind of flour, which is afterward made into a bread, most delicious to the palate of the Washoe. While visitors to the camp are always invited, in accordance with Indian hospitality, to partake of the compound, and great is the astonishment of poor Ix> at the disgust expressed by the white man for this kind of food. To the limited mfrui of the Indian it is incomprehensible that rfby should reject food which in his vernacular is defined as being “muchee good.” Cicero: Economy is of itself agrat revenue.