describes the Yguases in Texas, among whom he lived for several
years, in these words: "Their support is principally roots which
require roasting two days. Many are very bitter. Occasionally
they take deer and at times fish, but the quantity is so small
and the famine so great that they eat spiders and eggs of ants,
worms, lizards, salamanders, snakes, and vipers that kill whom
they strike, and they eat earth and all that there is, the dung
of deer, things I omit to mention and I earnestly believe that
were there stones in that land they would eat them. They save the
bones of the fish they consume, the snakes and other animals,
that they may afterward beat them together and eat the powder."
During these painful periods, they bade Cabeza de Vaca "not to be
sad. There would soon be prickly pears, although the season of
this fruit of the cactus might be months distant. When the pears
were ripe, the people feasted and danced and forgot their former
privations. They destroyed their female infants to prevent them
being taken by their enemies and thus becoming the means of
increasing the latter's number."

East of the Great Plains there dwelt still another important type
of Indians, the people of the deciduous forests. Their home
extended from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. As we have
already seen, the Iroquois who inhabited the northern part of
this region were in many respects the highest product of
aboriginal America. The northern Iroquois tribes, especially
those known as the Five Nations, were second to no other Indian
people north of Mexico in political organization, statecraft, and
military prowess. Their leaders were genuine diplomats, as the
wily French and English statesmen with whom they treated soon
discovered. One of their most notable traits was the reverence