We passed two great smoking mounds, and, on alighting to investigate, found that we were in the midst of a kamas-field, where a great many Indian women and children were busy digging the root, and roasting it in the earth.
Some of the old women wore the fringed skirt, made of cloth spun and woven from the soft inner bark of the young cedar, which they used to wear before blankets were introduced.
The Indians eat other roots beside the kamas, but that is the one on which they chiefly depend. As soon as the snow is off the ground, they begin to search for a little bulbous root they call the pohpoh. It looks like a small onion, and has a dry, spicy taste. In May they get the spatlam, or bitter-root. This is a delicate white root, that dissolves in boiling, and forms a bitter jelly. The Bitter Root River and Mountains get their name from this plant. In June comes the kamas. It looks like a little hyacinth-bulb, and when roasted is as nice as a chestnut. We have seen it in blossom, when its pale-blue flowers covered the fields so closely that, at a little distance, we took it for a lake. One of the women, seeing our curiosity as we watched them, drew some of the bulbs out of the earth ovens, and handed them to us. As we tasted them, they explained that they were not ready to eat; that it would take two or three days to roast them sufficiently. This they live upon for two or three months; with the salmon, it is their chief article of food. The women stop at the kamas-grounds, while the men go to the fishing-stations.
In August they gather the choke-berry and service-berry, to dry for the winter. When they are reduced to great extremity for food, they sometimes boil and eat the moss and lichens on the trees, which the deer eats. Most of the work of digging the roots, and picking the berries, falls upon the women. On this account, a Spokane man in marrying joins the tribe of his wife, instead of her joining his tribe; thinking, if he takes her away from the places where she has been accustomed to find her roots and berries, she may not succeed, in a new place, in discovering them.
We saw, in the vicinity of the Pelouse River, some remarkable basaltic rocks, that looked like buildings with columns and turrets and bastions. Some of them were like my idea of the great kings' tombs of the Egyptians. The colors on them were often very Egyptian-like,—bright sulphur-yellow, and brown, and sometimes orange and dark red,—incrustations of lichen and weather-staining. We saw, also, walls of pentagonal columns of rock, packed closely together. Where the Pelouse enters the Snake River, are immense ledges of square blocks. When we camped there, and I lay down beneath them at night, "Swedish trappa, a stair," from the geological text-book, was always running in my mind,—this black trap-rock made such great steps that led up towards the sky.
We have seen here a splendid specimen of gold, which is to be sent to the Exposition at Paris. It is granulated, and sparkles as I never saw gold before. Some one suggests that a thin film of quartz may be crystallized over it.
Next week we hope to go up within sight of the whirlpools of Death's Rapids, a long distance above here, on the Columbia River. These rapids are so named on account of the number of persons who have been lost in attempting to navigate them. Their names are cut into the rocks at the side of the passage; their bodies have never been found.