Columbus and Other Heroes of American Discovery

by N. D'Anvers

At this juncture a touching incident occurred. The wife of Chabornæan, the interpreter, who, it will be remembered, was a Snake by birth, entered the camp, and, recognizing her brother in the chief, she flung herself into his arms, and with many tears sobbed out her joy at finding him still alive. The accounts given by the restored captive of the kindness of the white men, their faithfulness and generosity to those who trusted them, and their power to avenge themselves on those who deceived them, were fruitful of the best results. The chief of the Snakes consented to send help to the main body of the expedition, which had not yet scaled the heights of the Rocky Mountains, and while preparations were being made for the advance of the whole party to the Pacific, Captain Clarke was provided with guides for a trial trip to the Columbia.

Mounted on a fine horse, lent to him by an Indian, Clarke quickly reached the river, though the mountains to be traversed were rugged and broken in the extreme; but here the difficulties in tracing the course of the Columbia became so great, that it was evidently impossible to do so without spending the whole of the remainder of the year in the neighborhood. So far as we can make out from the various accounts of his expedition, Clarke did not actually reach any of the headwaters of the Columbia, which are situated between N. lat. 54° and 42°, but he made a sufficiently thorough survey of the mountains from which the more northerly of its two branches proceeds, to convince himself of the identity of that branch with the river of Viscaino and Gray. A result of this trial trip of secondary importance was that the leader recognized the hopelessness of attempting to descend the Columbia in canoes, and on his return to the Indian camp, it was agreed that a detour should be made in a northerly direction, so as to strike the river below the mountain pass from which it flows on its way to join its sister stream in N. lat. 46° 5′, W. long. 118° 55′.

On the 23d August the expedition was once more en route. The sources of the Missouri had been discovered, the position of those of the Columbia determined, and the country between the two traversed more than once. All, therefore, that now remained to be done was to trace the great river of the West to the Pacific. Accompanied by a number of Shoshone guides, the Americans made their way toward the ocean by a rugged Indian path, halting now at one, now at another Indian village; and after much wandering to and fro, with terrible sufferings from cold and hunger, they entered a district inhabited by a people calling themselves Ootlashoots, who turned out to be members of one of the numerous inland Columbian tribes who inhabit the regions on the Pacific between N. lat. 52° 30′ and 45°.

After leaving the Ootlashoots, the explorers endured the extremities of famine, and were compelled first to kill and eat their horses, and then to purchase for food the dogs of wandering Indians met with on their painful way to the coast. At length, on the 13th September, the lower course of the upper branch of the Columbia, to which the name of Lewis was given, was reached, and from Twisted Hair, a chief of the Nez Percés, or Pierced-nosed Indians, another inland Columbian tribe, the joyful news was heard that the ocean was not far distant. Twisted Hair and his subjects, who received their peculiar appellation of Nez Percés account of some of them wearing a white shell suspended from their noses, assisted their white visitors in building canoes, in which the explorers floated easily down the now wide and rapid Columbia to the home of the Sokulks, belonging to the same great family as the Ootlashoots and Nez Percés, a wild but peaceable people, living in well-built huts, and clothing themselves in the skins of elk, deer, and other trophies of the chase.

Below the Sokulks dwelt the Pishquitpaws, who had never seen a white man, and were proportionately astonished at the sudden appearance among them of the Americans. Except that they wore scarcely any clothing at all, the Pishquitpaws differed but little from the other inland Columbian tribes visited; and when their terror at the arrival of their strange guests—who they thought had fallen straight from the sky—was somewhat subsided, they were ready enough to give information and show hospitality.

BASALTIC PINNACLES ON THE COLUMBIA RIVER.

As the canoes floated down the Columbia toward the Great Falls, the spirits of the party were cheered by the sight on the west of a lofty snow-tipped mountain, which they identified as that of St. Helen’s, seen by Vancouver from the mouth of the great river; and on the 22d October the Falls themselves were reached, where the Columbia, driven into a narrow channel some forty-five yards wide, with a huge black rock on one side and mighty hills on the other, whirls and boils in a terrific manner. The Indian guides voted this passage impassable for canoes; but, unwilling to undergo either the delay or fatigue necessary to transport the baggage by land, the leaders of the expedition determined to run the risk of shooting the Falls in their frail barks. To their own relief and the intense delight of the Indians the passage was successfully performed, and all dangers seemed now over, when the explorers discovered that the Falls were but the gateway, so to speak, of a yet more formidable impediment to navigation, known as the Great Narrows, where the river for three miles had literally to eat its way through a black rock varying in width from thirty to one hundred yards. Into this terrible passage, however, the canoes entered, and after a struggle, in which the skill and endurance of every member of the party were tried to the utmost, the smooth waters below were entered, and in the numerous seals disporting themselves on either side of the little vessels, the weary explorers read signs that the coast was now indeed near at hand.

The Columbia now gradually widened; on the first day of November the first appearance of tide water was noticed, and about the eighth of the same month the first view was obtained of the Pacific Ocean. A somewhat tempestuous trip of a few days followed this great era in American exploration; but the close of the month found the whole party in the mouth of the great Columbia. The American continent had been traversed for the first time by scientific observers, and the true extent of the American dominion could never again be doubted.

The first week in December was spent in beating about the Pacific coast in search of a suitable refuge in which to pass the winter, and on the 7th a small bay was selected, which was called Merryweather, after the Christian name of Captain Lewis. Here temporary tents were soon erected, and, in the long dreary months which followed, acquaintance was made with the Clatsops, [♦]Chinooks, Killamucks, and other seaboard tribes of the great Columbia family, who, though differing in much, agreed in a remarkable fondness for artificial deformity, especially for the flattening of the forehead. Hence the designation of Flatheads applied to all the tribes dwelling west of the Rocky Mountains by their cousins of the East.