President Jefferson had given to Captain Lewis an unlimited letter of credit on the United States, but such a letter would not buy from these Indians even a bushel of wapato.
The Cathlamets would trade for fishhooks. The Clatsops preferred beads, knives, or an old file.
No wonder they valued an old file: the finest work of their beautiful canoes was often done with a chisel fashioned from an old file. Lewis and Clark had frequent occasion to admire their skill in managing these little boats, often out-riding the waves in the most tumultuous seas.
Ashore, these canoe-Indians waddled and rolled like tipsy sailors. Afloat, straight and trim as horse-Indians of the prairie, each deft Chinook glided to his seat along the unrocking boats, and striking up the paddlers' "Ho-ha-ho-ha-ho-ha-" went rowing all their lives, until their arms grew long and strong, their legs shrunk short and crooked, and their heads became abnormally intelligent.
Nor were these coast Indians lacking in courage,—they sometimes ventured into the sea in their wonderful canoes, and harpooned the great whale and towed him in.
When it came to prices for their beautiful skins of sea-otter, almost nothing would do. Clark offered a watch, a handkerchief, an American dollar, and a bunch of red beads for a single skin.
"No! No!" in stentorian tone—"Tyee ka-mo-suck,—chief beads,"—the most common sort of large blue glass beads, the precious money of that country. Chiefs hung them on their bosoms, squaws bound them on their ankles, pretty maidens hung them in their hair. But Lewis and Clark had only a few and must reserve them for most pressing necessity.
Since that May morning when Captain Robert Gray discovered the Columbia River, fourteen years before, the Chinook Indians had learned the value of furs. Once they handed over their skins, and took without a murmur what the Boston skippers chose to give. Now, a hundred ships upon that shore had taught them craft.
One of old King Comcomly's people had a robe of sea-otter, "the fur of which was the most beautiful we had ever seen." In vain Lewis offered everything he had, nothing would purchase the treasured cloak but the belt of blue beads worn by Sacajawea.
On every hand among these coast tribes were blankets, sailor-clothes, guns,—old Revolutionary muskets mended for this trade,—powder and ball, the powder in little japanned tin flasks in which the traders sold it.