"Why not?" returned Tawannears, shrugging his shoulders. "We have come far with little success. If these people are kind perhaps they will set our feet on the true path."
"If they are kind," I repeated.
Peter, in the stern, swept his paddle in a curve that steered us toward the bank.
"Ja," he grunted. "Andt berhaps we get something different to eat."
We had no cause to regret the decision. These people, who called themselves Tsutpeli,* were both kind and considerate, and much impressed by the white skins that Corlaer and I still possessed, despite thick coats of grease and sunburn. They were likewise very intelligent. After we had been escorted to the house of a chief, in which dwelt the families of all his sons, and had eaten of several different foods, in particular a large fish which I suspect to have been a kind of salmon, besides berries and a stew of roots, leaves and twigs—much to Peter's enjoyment—our hosts began a humorous attempt to strike a common ground of intercourse with us.
*Nez Percés—although it is difficult to understand how they got so far West.—A.D.H.S.
They would point to various objects, and give their names for them, then question us for ours; and we, or rather, Tawannears, who was spokesman for us, would reply with the Seneca terms. In this way, in the course of the weeks we spent in this village, we came to acquire a working vocabulary, and were able, with the help of signs and guess-work, to engage in simple conversations.
They told us that they had not always held the river to the point they now occupied, but had recently conquered it from a tribe they called the Chinook, who were notably fine sailors and who still controlled the lower reaches where were the best fisheries. With some difficulty, Tawannears made them understand the general purpose of his quest, but all the principal men disowned any knowledge of a Land of Lost Souls. Very different, however, was their reception of the legend Nadoweiswe had recounted of the abiding-place of the Great Spirit. Their faces lighted at once, and Apaiopa, the leading chief, signed to us to follow him from the lodge.
It was sunset, and the mountain wall we had discerned to the north of the river appeared as a string of isolated peaks, three or four of them towering in lordly majesty above the indefinite blue outline of the lesser ridges. The farthest one we could see was the mightiest. It bulked across the horizon with the effect of a monstrous personality, dazzling white, its crest ripping the clouds apart. At that distance it had the look of sitting in the heavens, detached, not earthbound.
"Tamanoas,"* said Apaiopa, pointing. "The Great Spirit! The Chinook told us about Him when we came here. Sometimes He is angry—Bang! Like this." He touched my musket. "Sometimes He goes away into the sky. He is the Great Spirit!"