CHAPTER XI
LEWIS AND CLARK IV
By the end of August the explorers, having procured a number of horses, set to work to make saddles, cache their extra baggage, and set out for their journey north and west. The way led them over rough mountains, often without a trail. They were fortunate in having an old Indian as guide, but met much cold weather, and found the country barren of game. However, after two or three days of very difficult travel, they came upon a camp of friendly Indians, who fed them. These people professed to be an offshoot of the Tushepaw tribe, had plenty of horses, and were fairly well provided. They told them that down the great river was a large fall, near which lived white people, who supplied them with beads and brass wire. Not long after this they met the first Chopunnish, or Pierced-nose Indians, whom we know to-day as Nez Percés. They were friendly, and were treated as other tribes had been.
Although the explorers had had one satisfying meal, yet food was very scarce, and the Indians subsisted as best they might on the few salmon still remaining in the streams, which they shared with the white men. The privations suffered recently were making them weak; many were sick; and it was so necessary to husband their strength that Captain Clark determined to make the remaining journey by water. Canoes were built, and the thirty-eight horses were branded and turned over to three Indians to care for until the explorers returned. Provisions for the trip were difficult to obtain. On the morning of October 7 they started down Lewis River without two of the Nez Percé chiefs who had promised to go with them. Indian encampments were numerous along the river, but food continued very scarce, and their only supply consisted of roots, which they got from the Indians. Later they bought some dogs from the Nez Percés for food, and were laughed at by the Indians, who did not eat dogs. The Nez Percés during summer and autumn occupied themselves in fishing for salmon and collecting roots and berries, while in winter they hunted the deer on snow-shoes, and toward spring crossed the mountains to the Missouri for the purpose of trading for buffalo robes. They appeared very different from the kindly Shoshoni; they were selfish and avaricious, and expected a reward for every service and a full price for every article they parted with.
Although it was now drawing toward mid-October, the weather continued warm. Progress down the stream was rapid, though more so in appearance than in reality, owing to the river’s bends. On the bank of the stream, at a large Indian camp where they stopped October 11, a novel form of sweat-house was observed. Earth was banked up on three sides against a cut-bank at the river’s edge, and the Indians, descending through the roof, which was covered with brush and earth, except for a small aperture, took down their hot stones and vessels of water and bathed here.
They were now approaching the camp of a different nation of Indians, who had been warned of the coming of the party by the two chiefs who had gone before, and they began to receive visits from men who had come up the stream to satisfy the curiosity excited by the reports. When they reached the camp they were hospitably received, and the usual council was held, accompanied by distribution of presents and medals. Here they obtained from the Indians some dogs, a few fish, and a little dried horse-flesh. This was at the junction of the Lewis River and the Columbia; and the Indians, who called themselves Sokulks, seemed a mild and peaceable people, living in a state of comparative happiness. The men appeared to have but one wife, old age was respected, and the people were agreeable to deal with. Their support was largely fish, to which were added roots and the flesh of the antelope. They were chiefly canoe people, and possessed but few horses.
Here Captain Clark, while ascending the Columbia in a small canoe, first saw, besides the captured fish drying on scaffolds, “immense numbers of salmon strewed along the shore, or floating on the surface of the water.” At the Indian villages that he passed he was hospitably received, and here first the sage grouse, called a “prairie cock, a bird of the pheasant kind, of about the size of a small turkey,” was captured.
Proceeding down the Columbia a few days’ journey, an interesting incident took place. “As Captain Clark arrived at the lower end of the rapid before any, except one of the small canoes, he sat down on a rock to wait for them, and, seeing a crane fly across the river, shot it, and it fell near him. Several Indians had been before this passing on the opposite side toward the rapids, and some who were then nearly in front of him, being either alarmed at his appearance or the report of the gun, fled to their homes. Captain Clark was afraid that these people had not yet heard that the white men were coming, and therefore, in order to allay their uneasiness before the rest of the party should arrive, he got into the small canoe with three men, rowed over toward the houses, and, while crossing, shot a duck, which fell into the water. As he approached no person was to be seen, except three men in the plains, and they, too, fled as he came near the shore. He landed in front of five houses close to each other, but no one appeared, and the doors, which were of mat, were closed. He went toward one of them with a pipe in his hand, and, pushing aside the mat, entered the lodge, where he found thirty-two persons, chiefly men and women, with a few children, all in the greatest consternation; some hanging down their heads, others crying and wringing their hands. He went up to them and shook hands with each one in the most friendly manner; but their apprehensions, which had for a moment subsided, revived on his taking out a burning-glass, as there was no roof to the house, and lighting his pipe. He then offered it to several of the men, and distributed among the women and children some small trinkets which he had with him, and gradually restored a degree of tranquility among them. Leaving this house, and directing each of his men to visit a house, he entered a second. Here he found the inmates more terrified than those in the first; but he succeeded in pacifying them, and afterward went into the other houses, where the men had been equally successful. Retiring from the houses, he seated himself on a rock, and beckoned to some of the men to come and smoke with him, but none of them ventured to join him till the canoes arrived with the two chiefs, who immediately explained our pacific intentions toward them. Soon after the interpreter’s wife landed, and her presence dissipated all doubts of our being well disposed, since in this country no woman ever accompanies a war party; they therefore all came out, and seemed perfectly reconciled; nor could we, indeed, blame them for their terrors, which were perfectly natural. They told the two chiefs that they knew we were not men, for they had seen us fall from the clouds. In fact, unperceived by them, Captain Clark had shot the white crane, which they had seen fall just before he appeared to their eyes; the duck which he had killed also fell close by him, and as there were some clouds flying over at the moment, they connected the fall of the birds with his sudden appearance, and believed that he had himself actually dropped from the clouds, considering the noise of the rifle, which they had never heard before, the sound announcing so extraordinary an event. This belief was strengthened, when, on entering the room, he brought down fire from the heavens by means of his burning-glass. We soon convinced them, however, that we were merely mortals, and after one of our chiefs had explained our history and objects, we all smoked together in great harmony.”
Below this, other Indian villages were passed, and there was more or less intercourse between the white men and the Indians. On the 20th an island was visited, one end of which was devoted to the burial of the dead. The passage down the river continued to be more or less interrupted by rapids and falls, about which they were obliged to make portages. All the Indians seemed to be friendly, and seemed also to be in great dread of the Snake Indians, with whom they were constantly at war.