History of the Expedition Under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. 2. / To the Sources of the Missouri, Thence Across the Rocky Mountains and Down the River Columbia to the Pacific Ocean. Performed During the Years 1804-5-6.

by Meriwether Lewis; William Clark

The Chopunnish bury their dead in sepulchres, formed of boards, constructed like the roof of a house. The body is rolled in skins and laid one over another, separated by a board only, both above and below. We have sometimes seen their dead buried in wooden boxes, and rolled in skins in the manner above mentioned. They sacrifice their horses, canoes, and every other species of property to their dead; the bones of many horses are seen lying round their sepulchres.

Among the reptiles common to this country are the two species of innocent snakes already described, and the rattlesnake, which last is of the same species as that of the Missouri, and though abundant here, is the only poisonous snake we have seen between the Pacific and the Missouri. Besides these there are the common black lizard and horned lizard. Of frogs there are several kinds, such as the small green tree frog, the small frog common in the United States, which sings in the spring of the year, a species of frog frequenting the water, much larger than the bull-frog, and in shape between the delicate length of the bull-frog, and the shorter and less graceful form of the toad like; the last of which, however, its body is covered with little pustules, or lumps: we have never heard it make a noise of any kind. Neither the toad bull-frog; the moccasin-snake, nor the copperhead-snake are to be found here. Captain Lewis killed a snake near the camp three feet and eleven inches in length, and much the colour of the rattlesnake. There was no poisonous tooth to be found. It had two hundred and eighteen scuta on the abdomen, and fifty-nine squama or half formed scuta on the tail. The eye was of a moderate size: the iris of a dark yellowish brown, and the pupil black. There was nothing remarkable in the form of the head, which was not so wide across the jaws as that of the poisonous class of snakes usually are.

There is a species of lizard, which we have called the horned lizard, about the size and much resembling in figure the ordinary black lizard. The belly is, notwithstanding, broader, the tail shorter, and the action much slower than the ordinary lizard. It crawls like the toad, is of a brown colour, and interspersed with yellowish brown spots; it is covered with minute shells, interspersed with little horny projections like prickles on the upper part of the body. The belly and throat resemble the frogs, and are of a light yellowish brown. The edge of the belly is regularly beset with these horny projections, which give to those edges a serrate figure; the eye is small and of a dark colour. Above and behind the eyes are several projections of the bone, which being armed at the extremities with a firm black substance, having the appearance of horns sprouting from the head, has induced us to call it the horned lizard. These animals are found in great abundance in the sandy parts of the plains, and after a shower of rain are seen basking in the sun. For the greatest part of the time they are concealed in holes. They are found in great numbers on the banks of the Missouri, and in the plains through which we have passed above the Wollawollahs.

Most of the insects common to the United States are seen in this country: such as the butterfly, the common housefly, the blowingfly, the horsefly, except one species of it, the gold-coloured earfly, the place of which is supplied by a fly of a brown colour, which attaches itself to the same part of the horse, and is equally troublesome. There are likewise nearly all the varieties of beatles known in the Atlantic states, except the large cow beatle, and the black beatle, commonly called the tumblebug. Neither the hornet, the wasp, nor the yellowjacket inhabit this part of the country, but there is an insect resembling the last of these, though much larger, which is very numerous, particularly in the Rocky mountains and on the waters of the Columbia; the body and abdomen are yellow, with transverse circles of black, the head black, and the wings, which are four in number, of a dark brown colour: their nests are built in the ground, and resemble that of the hornet, with an outer covering to the comb. These insects are fierce, and sting very severely, so that we found them very troublesome in frightening our horses as we passed the mountains. The silkworm is also found here, as well as the humble-bee, though the honey-bee is not.

May 18. Twelve hunters set out this morning after the bear, which are now our chief dependence; but as they are now ferocious, the hunters henceforward never go except in pairs. Soon after they left us, a party of Chopunnish erected a hut on the opposite side of the river in order to watch the salmon, which is expected to arrive every day. For this purpose they have constructed with sticks, a kind of wharf, projecting about ten feet into the river, and three feet above its surface, on the extremity of which one of the fishermen exercised himself with a scooping net, similar to that used in our country; but after several hours’ labour he was still unsuccessful. In the course of the morning three Indians called at our camp and told us that they had been hunting near the place where we met the Chopunnish last autumn, and which is called by then the quamash grounds, but after roaming about for several days had killed nothing. We gave them a small piece of meat, which they said they would keep for their small children, which they said were very hungry, and then, after smoking, took leave of us. Some of our hunters returned almost equally unsuccessful. They had gone over the whole country between Collins’s creek and the Kooskooskee, to their junction, at the distance of ten miles, without seeing either a deer or bear, and at last brought in a single hawk and a salmon dropped by an eagle. This last was not in itself considerable, but gave us hopes of soon seeing that fish in the river, an event which we ardently desire, for though the rapid rise of the river denotes a great decrease of snow on the mountains, yet we shall not be able to leave our camp for some time.

Monday, 19. After a cold rainy night, during a greater part of which we lay in the water, the weather became fair, and we then sent some men to a village above us, on the opposite side, to purchase some roots. They carried with them for this purpose a small collection of alls, knitting pins, and armbands, with which they obtained several bushels of the root of cows, and some bread of the same material. They were followed too by a train of invalids from the village, who came to ask for our assistance. The men were generally afflicted with sore eyes, but the women had besides this a variety of other disorders, chiefly rheumatic, a violent pain and weakness in the loins, which is a common complaint among the females, and one of them seemed much dejected, and as we thought, from the account of her disease, hysterical. We gave her thirty drops of laudanum, and after administering eye-water and rubbing the rheumatic patients with volatile linament, and giving cathartics to others, they all thought themselves much relieved, and returned highly satisfied to the village. We were fortunate enough to retake one of the horses on which we crossed the Rocky mountains in the autumn, and which had become almost wild since that time.

Tuesday, 20. Again it rained during the night, and the greater part of this day. Our hunters were out in different directions, but though they saw a bear and a deer or two, they only killed one of the latter, which proved to be of the mule-deer species. The next day,

Wednesday 21, finding the rain still continue we left our ragged sail tent, and formed a hut with willow poles and grass. 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. We might ourselves collect those roots, but as there are several species of hemlock growing among the cows, and difficult to be distinguished from that plant, we are afraid to suffer the men to collect them, lest the party might be poisoned by mistaking them. On parcelling out the stores, the stock of each man was found to consist of only one awl and one knitting-pin, half an ounce of vermillion, two needles, a few skeins of thread, and about a yard of riband—a slender means of bartering for our subsistence; but the men have been now so much accustomed to privations, that neither the want of meat nor the scanty funds of the party, excite the least anxiety among them.

Thursday, 22. We availed ourselves of the fair weather to dry our baggage and store of roots, and being still without meat, killed one of our colts, intending to reserve the other three for the mountains. In the afternoon we were amused by a large party of Indians, on the opposite side of the river, hunting on horseback. After riding at full speed down the steep hills, they at last drove the deer into the river, where we shot it, and two Indians immediately pursued it on a raft, and took it. Several hunters, who had gone to a considerable distance near the mountains, returned with five deer. They had purchased also two red salmon trout, which the Indians say remain in this river during the greater part of the winter, but are not good at this season, as it in fact appeared, for they were very meagre. The salmon, we understand, are now arrived at no great distance, in Lewis’s river, but some days will yet elapse before they come up to this place. This, as well as the scarcity of game, made us wish to remove lower down; but on examination we found that there was no place in that direction calculated for a camp, and therefore resolved to remain in our present position. Some uneasiness has been excited by a report, that two nights ago a party of Shoshonees had surrounded a Chopunnish house, on the south side of Lewis’s river, but the inhabitants having discovered their intentions, had escaped without injury.