The Sheep Eaters

This work presents an ethnographic and narrative portrait of an extinct mountain tribe that subsisted on mountain sheep and lived among high granite walls. It combines cultural description—lodgings thatched with quaking-asp bark, food and religious practices centered on a sun shrine at Bald Mountain, rock carvings and artifacts—with travel episodes and oral recollections recorded from surviving elders. Interwoven are sketches of neighboring peoples, journeys to paint rocks and canyons, and a dramatic traditional tale in which a young man named Red Arrow searches for and rescues a woman, Aggretta. The book closes with curiosities, local anecdotes, and reflective commentary on vanished ways of life.