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among the young squaws who have become contaminated by contact with worthless whites who have found a home - often a refuge - among them; the result being the scourge of the human race - venereal diseases.
For here, as with the Northern Californian Indians - the subject of preceding reports - the record of the whites in their intercourse with the Indians is one of which they have but little reason to be proud.
The law of divorce is very much simplified where necessity exists. If the offender belongs to the female sex, she is driven away by her husband to find a home with another man - if so willing. If the man is guilty - the squaw leaves him - if so willing also - without further ado.
Thus, like the majority of the Indian tribes on the American Continent, the Mahhaos, starting from the comprehensive Americanism of "Number One," not only reach the family and then the tribal destination as in the old patriarchal times, but retain other patriarchal customs also. 
The villages of the Mahhaos dot the valley named after them all the way from the settlement of Hardyville to the Cañon of the Needles - an area of some 45 miles in length with a width varying from one to eight miles. They are surrounded by little plots of cultivated ground varying from one to three acres in which they raise corn, melons, pumpkins, and a species of bean very succulent and nutritious and eaten when green. They are vegetarians in diet seldom using meat although it has been stated that a dead Government mule is considered quite a rare bit among them when they come upon such a windfall. 
The well known tenacity of life of the average Government mule, however, leads the writer to the belief that the "bit" is "rare" in more ways than one. The teeth of these Indians are much worn showing than they are much used in masticating food. Tooth-ache among them is almost unknown, the writer knowing of but one instance in a three year