"Brother Bristow, I propose that we retire."

They retired, and there is no record that Bishop Soule ever expressed
the least desire to repeat his visit to the interior of a Digger
Indian's abode.

The whites had many difficulties with the Diggers in the early days. In
most cases I think the whites were chiefly to blame. It is very hard for
the strong to be just to the weak. The weakest creature, pressed hard,
will strike back. White women and children were massacred in retaliation
for outrages committed upon the ignorant Indians by white outlaws. Then
there would be a sweeping destruction of Indians by the excited whites,
who in those days made rather light of Indian shooting. The shooting of
a "buck" was about the same thing, whether it was a male Digger or a
deer.

"There is not much fight in a Digger unless he's got the dead-wood on
you, and then he'll make it rough for you. But these Injuns are of no
use, and I'd about as soon shoot one of them as a coyote" (ki-o-te).

The speaker was a very red-faced, sandy-haired man, with blood-shot blue
eyes, whom I met on his return to the Humboldt country after a visit to
San Francisco.

"Did you ever shoot an Indian?" I asked.

"I first went up into the Eel River country in '46," he answered. "They
give us a lot of trouble in them days. They would steal cattle, and our
boys would shoot. But we've never had much difficulty with them since
the big fight we had with them in 1849. A good deal of devilment had