William Clark

“ On this little neck of land we are exposed with a miserable covering, which does not deserve the name of a shelter to the violence of the winds; all our bedding and stores, as well as our bodies are completely wet, our clothes rotting with constant exposure, and no food except the dried fish brought from the falls, to which we are again reduced. The hunters all returned hungry, and drenched with rain, having seen neither deer nor elk, and the swan and brant too shy to be approached. ”

“ The Indian, thus independent, acknowledging no authority but his own, will proceed without compunction of conscience or fear of punishment, to wage war on the defenceless inhabitants of the frontier, whose lives and property, in many instances, were thus sacrificed at the shrine of an inordinate thirst for wealth in their governors, which in reality occasioned all those evils. ”

“ But as we have had occasion to remark more than once, the object of foreign trade which is the most desired, are the common cheap, blue or white beads, of about fifty or seventy to the penny weight, which are strung on strands a fathom in length, and sold by the yard, or the length of both arms: of these blue beads, which are called tia commashuck, or chief beads, hold the first rank in their ideas of relative value: the most inferior kind, are esteemed beyond the finest wampum, and are temptations which can always seduce them to part with their most valuable effects. ”

“ The valley is open and fertile, and besides the innumerable quantities of beaver and otter, with which its creeks are supplied, the bushes of the low grounds are a favorite resort for deer, while on the higher parts of the valley are seen scattered groups of antelopes, and still further, on the steep sides of the mountains, we observed many of the bighorn, which take refuge there from the wolves and bears. ”

“ We were taken across in a canoe by two squaws, to each of whom we gave a fish-hook, and then coasting along the bay, passed at two miles the low bluff of a small hill, below which are the ruins of some old huts, and close to it the remains of a whale. The country is low, open and marshy; interspersed with some high pine and a thick undergrowth. Five miles from the creek, we came to a stream forty yards wide at low water, which we called Chinnook river. ”

“ From this elevated spot we have a commanding view of the surrounding mountains, which so completely inclose us, that although we have once passed them, we almost despair of ever escaping from them without the assistance of the Indians. The marks on the trees, which had been our chief dependence, are much fewer and more difficult to be distinguished than we had supposed; but our guides traverse this trackless region with a kind of instinctive sagacity; they never hesitate, they are never embarrassed ”

“ In all of the houses are images of men of different shapes, and placed as ornaments in the parts of the house where they are most seen. They gave us nuts, berries, and some dried fish to eat, and we purchased, among other articles, a hat made after their own taste, such as they wear, without a brim. They ask high prices for all that they sell, observing that the whites below, pay dearly for all which they carry there. We cannot learn precisely the nature of the trade carried on by the Indians with the inhabitants below. ”

“ This was immediately begun by almost the whole party, who in the course of the day dragged four of the canoes to the head of the rapids, with great difficulty and labour. A guard, consisting of one sick man and three who had been lamed by accidents, remained with captain Lewis to guard the baggage. This precaution was absolutely necessary to protect it from the Wahelellahs, whom we discovered to be great thieves, notwithstanding their apparent honesty in restoring our boat: indeed, so arrogant and intrusive have they become, that nothing but our numbers, we are convinced, saves us from attack. ”

“ The fish is, indeed, their chief food, except the roots, and the casual supplies of the antelope, which to those who have only bows and arrows, must be very scanty. This diet may be the direct or the remote cause of the chief disorder which prevails among them, as well as among the Flatheads, on the Kooskooskee and Lewis’s river. With all these Indians a bad soreness of the eyes is a very common disorder, which is suffered to ripen by neglect, till many are deprived of one of their eyes, and some have totally lost the use of both. ”

“ The love of gain is the Indians’ ruling passion, and the fear of punishment must form the corrective; to this passion we are to ascribe their inordinate thirst for the possession of merchandise, their unwillingness to accede to any terms, or enter into any stipulations, except such as appear to promise them commercial advantages, and the want of good faith, which they always evince by not complying with any regulations, which in practice do not produce to them those expected or promised advantages. ”

“ About sunset we reached a beautiful prairie, opposite the middle of what we had called Image-canoe island, and having made twenty-three miles, encamped for the night. In the prairie is a large pond or lake, and an open grove of oak borders the back part. There are many deer and elk in the neighbourhood, but they are very shy, and the annual fern which is now abundant and dry, make such a rustling as the hunters pass through it, that they could not come within reach of the game, and we obtained nothing but a single duck. ”

“ In a country, indeed, where so much of the intercourse between different tribes is carried on by water, the ingenuity of the people would naturally direct itself to the improvement of canoes, which would gradually become, from a mere safe conveyance, to an elegant ornament. We have accordingly seen, on the Columbia, canoes of many forms, beginning with the simple boats near the mountains, to those more highly decorated, because more useful nearer the mouth of the Columbia. ”

“ In the plains are great quantities of two species of prickly pear, now in bloom. Gooseberries of the common red kind are in abundance and just beginning to ripen, but there are no currants. The river has now widened to an hundred yards; is deep, crowded with islands, and in many parts rapid. At the distance of seventeen miles, the timber disappears totally from the river bottoms. About this part of the river, the wind, which had blown on our backs, and constantly put the elk on their guard, shifted round, and we then shot three of them, and a brown bear. ”

“ The robe of the women is like that worn by the men, except that it does not reach below the waist. Those most esteemed are made of strips of sea-otter skin, which being twisted are interwoven with silk-grass, or the bark of the white cedar, in such a manner that the fur appears equally on both sides, so as to form a soft and warm covering. The skin of the racoon or beaver are also employed in the same way, though on other occasions these skins are simply dressed in the hair, and worn without further preparation. ”

“ The rest of the men were occupied in building a canoe for present use, as the Indians promise to give us a horse for it when we leave them. We received nothing from our hunters except a single sandhill crane, which are very abundant in this neighbourhood, and consumed at dinner the last morsel of meat which we have. As there now seems but little probability of our procuring a stock of dried meat, and the fish is as yet an uncertain resource, we made a division of all our stock of merchandise, so as to enable the men to purchase a store of roots and bread for the mountains. ”

“ Among the Sokulks too, and indeed among all the tribes whose chief subsistence is fish, we have observed that bad teeth are very general: some have the teeth, particularly those of the upper jaw, worn down to the gums, and many of both sexes, and even of middle age, have lost them almost entirely. This decay of the teeth is a circumstance very unusual among the Indians, either of the mountains or the plains, and seems peculiar to the inhabitants of the Columbia. We cannot avoid regarding as one principal cause of it, the manner in which they eat their food. ”

“ The Indians in general are cruel masters; they ride very hard, and as the saddles are so badly constructed that it is almost impossible to avoid wounding the back, yet they continue to ride when the poor creatures are scarified in a dreadful manner. At eleven o’clock we left these honest, worthy people, accompanied by our guide and the Chopunnish family, and directed our course north 30° east, across an open level sandy plain, unbroken except by large banks of pure sand, which have drifted in many parts of the plain to the height of fifteen or twenty feet. ”

“ We parted with captain McClellan, and within a few miles passed the Grand river, below which we overtook the hunters, who had been sent forward yesterday afternoon. They had not been able to kill any thing, nor did we see any game except one bear and three turkies, so that our whole stock of provisions is one biscuit for each person; but as there is an abundance of pappaws, the men are perfectly contented. The current of the river is more gentle than it was when we ascended, the water being lower though still rapid in places where it is confined. ”

“ The rat which inhabits the Rocky mountains, like those on the borders of the Missouri, in the neighbourhood of the mountains, have the distinguishing traits of possessing a tail covered with hair like the other parts of the body. These animals are probably of the same species with those of the Atlantic states, which have not this characteristic distinction: the ordinary house rat we found on the banks of the Missouri, as far up as the woody country extends, and the rat, such as has been described, captain Lewis found in the state of Georgia, and also in Madison’s cave in Virginia. ”

“ The game is scarce, and nothing is now to be seen, except elk, which to almost all the men, are very difficult to be procured: but Drewyer, who is the offspring of a Canadian Frenchman, and an Indian woman, has passed his life in the woods, and unites, in a wonderful degree, the dextrous aim of the frontier huntsman, with the intuitive sagacity of the Indian, in pursuing the faintest tracks through the forest. ”

“ At this village the river widens to nearly a mile in extent, the low grounds too become wider, and they as well as the mountains on each side are covered with pine, spruce-pine, cottonwood, a species of ash, and some alder. After being so long accustomed to the dreary nakedness of the country above, the change is as grateful to the eye, as it is useful in supplying us with fuel. Four miles from the village is a point of land on the right, where the hills become lower, but are still thickly timbered. ”

“ These strangers who visit the Columbia for the purpose of trade or hunting, must be either English or Americans. The Indians inform us that they speak the same language as we do, and indeed the few words which the Indians have learnt from the sailors, such as musket, powder, shot, knife, file, heave the lead, damned rascal, and other phrases of that description, evidently show that the visitors speak the English language. ”

“ In the course of the day we met a trader, with three men, on his way to the Pawnee Loups or Wolf Pawnees, on the Platte. Soon after another boat passed us with seven men from St. Louis, bound to the Mahas. With both of these trading parties we had some conversation, but our anxiety to go on would not suffer us to remain long with them. The Indians, and particularly the squaws and children are weary of the long journey, and we are not less desirous of seeing our country and friends. We saw on the shore, deer, rackoons, and turkies. ”

“ The black-tailed fallow deer are peculiar to this coast, and are a distinct species, partaking equally of the qualities of the mule and the common deer. Their ears are longer, and their winter coat darker than those of the common deer. The receptacle of the eye more conspicuous, their legs shorter, their bodies thicker and larger. The tail is of the same length with that of the common deer, the hair on the under side white, and on its sides and top of a deep jetty black: the hams resemble in form and colour those of the mule, which it likewise resembles in its gait. ”

“ We, therefore, crossed and descended the river, and at one mile below the junction, halted to let the horses graze in a fertile bottom, in which were some Indian lodges, that appear to have been inhabited during the last winter. We here discern more timber than the country in general possesses; for besides an undergrowth of rose, honeysuckle, and redberry bushes, and a small quantity of willow timber, the three species of cottonwood, the narrow-leafed, the broad-leafed, and the species known to the Columbia, though here seen for the first time on the Missouri, are all united at this place. ”

“ But the most distinguishing part of their physiognomy, is the peculiar flatness and width of their forehead, a peculiarity which they owe to one of these customs by which nature is sacrificed to fantastic ideas of beauty. The custom, indeed, of flattening the head by artificial pressure during infancy, prevails among all the nations we have seen west of the rocky mountains. To the east of that barrier, the fashion is so perfectly unknown, that there the western Indians, with the exception of the Alliatan or Snake nation, are designated by the common name of Flatheads. ”

“ At the distance of two miles we crossed the creek, and ascended a ridge in a direction towards the northeast. Fallen timber still obstructed our way so much, that it was eleven o’clock before we had made seven miles, to a small branch of Hungry creek. In the hollows and on the north side of the hills large quantities of snow still remain, in some places to the depth of two or three feet. Vegetation too is proportionally retarded, the dog-tooth violet being just in bloom, and the honeysuckle, huckleberry, and a small species of white maple, beginning to put forth their leaves. ”

“ It is well known to me that we have several persons engaged in the trade of the Missouri, who have, within the last three years, been adopted as citizens of the United States, and who are now hostile to our government. It is not reasonable to expect, that such persons will act with good faith towards us. Hence, the necessity of assigning metes and bounds to their transactions among the Indians. ”