loaded into our wagons, we felt warranted in making our start across the desert."[1]
As the mesquite aided the forty-niners, so it has aided many a prospector,[2] by feeding the beast that bore his equipment, but its chief use has been for animals on the range.[3]
USE OF MESQUITE AS FORAGE FOR PASTURING LIVESTOCK
Mesquite beans are especially valuable because they ripen in August at the very time when drought may be expected to reach its worst. The beans are greedily eaten by cattle, horse, and goats. As a rancher[4] put it, "I have mesquite in my pasture and value a crop of beans very highly. I let the stock eat the beans on the trees and a good bean crop means fat stock."
Similar testimony of the importance of the mesquite as range fodder comes from many parts of the Southwest. Some
- ↑ Unpublished journal of Charles Pancoast, Salem, New Jersey. I continue to quote: "These Yuma Indians had a bad feeling towards the white people, and their hostility had lately been increased, in consequence of the acts of a lot of Texas emigrants, who, being too indolent to gather mesquite beans from the trees, broke open a number of Indian caches where they had stored their winter supply of the best screw beans, and loaded them in their wagons, for feed for their cattle. We did not do this, but picked up two hundred bushels or more from under the trees, and our cattle ate as much more, which did not please them very well, for it helped to diminish the supply they relied upon for their winter's bread. The soldiers had some of the bread made by the Indians from these beans. It looked like rich cake made from the yolk of eggs or nice corn bread. I ate a little of it and found it sweet and palatable, having, however, a little of the astringent twang of the acorn. . . ."
- ↑ "The mesquite is another bush or tree which is very abundant in the section lying southwest of the southern border of Utah, extending southwest over nearly to the coast. The mesquite bean is used in that section of the country quite extensively by the prospector and miner as food for their burros." (L. M. Winsor, San Luis Valley, Alamosa, Colorado.)
- ↑ "It was very noticeable during my work in Sulphur Spring Valley that the cattle were always in the mesquite bushes from the time they began to leaf out until the rainy season began, very few animals being found on the prairie; while as soon as the rains began, they transferred their grazing ground to the prairie." (R. W. Clothier, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona.)
- ↑ Letter, August 4, 1913, C. W. Underwood, Chillicothe, Texas.
