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Old Joses - [two underlined] was a thin, little fellow who used to sit in the camp all day long, dreaming and smoking unless he was out digging herbs. He was a harmless, inoffensive little old fellow who got his living by begging & selling herbs to the apothecaries. He would drink whenever he had the money to buy it but he was no drunkard.

Smoking was his chief delight, but next to that was to prepare the squaw buck bark. He would scrape it on the stick & then lying in the sunshine outside the camp, stretched out on an old blanket [struck through] coat watch the sticks dry turning them tenderly over & over.

He had the lining of an old coat sleeve which he used as tobacco pouch, putting all his supply of the scraped bark into it. In the camp he would sit by the hour like a wax figure, never changing his position. You couldn't tell whether he was awake or asleep. From this habit my father