How beautiful was this broad prairie beyond the mountains, here where
lived the Cho-pun-nish or Pierced Nose Indians while they caught salmon
in the rivers and the women dug the kamass roots! But the fish and the
roots were given so generously that all the party were made ill.
The village was near the banks of the Koos-koos-kee. Twisted-hair, who
was the head chief, drew a map with charcoal on a white robe. He showed
that not far below, the Koos-koos-kee joined another river, and that
this river joined another river from the north, and the two combined
flowed west to the big water.
“Tim-tim-m-m-m!” crooned all the Indians, imitating the noise of some
great falls that would be met. From the region of these falls and
below, came the beads and the brass ornaments traded to Indians by
white men.
’Twas time to change from horses to canoes again. Five canoes were
hollowed by fire from tree trunks――for only a few of the men were
strong enough to swing an adze. All the horses were branded with the
army brand which bore the name “Capt. M. Lewis, U. S.,” and left in
charge of the Pierced Noses. Chief Twisted-hair promised that the
horses should be well taken care of, and would be waiting when the
white men asked for them again.
“Well, I for one am glad to be away,” said George Shannon, when in the
morning of October 7 the canoes, laden and manned, their oar-blades
flashing, headed into mid-stream. “These Nez Percés are a good
people――’bout the best looking Injuns we’ve seen――but they’re mighty
independent. They don’t give anything for nothing.”
“No. And they even hold us to small account because we eat dogs,” quoth
Joe Fields. “But if a man wants meat, in their village, it’s eat fish,
hoss or dog――an’ dog’s the only stuff with any strength.”
That was true. Lacking better meat, the captains finally were buying
the Pierced Noses’ work-dogs――for dog-meat had been found good, back at
the Sioux camps on the Missouri. Drouillard and Cruzatte and the other
Frenchmen preferred it even to deer. But the Pierced Noses sneered at
the white “dog-eaters.”
Why they were called “Pierced Noses” nobody could tell. However, old
Toby claimed that below there were other, real Pierced Noses, and also
real Flat-heads.
Chief Twisted-hair and a second chief, Tetoh, were aboard the captains’
canoe, to help the white men pass through the other villages, into the
“Tim-tim-m-m” river.
As for old Toby and his son, on the third day out, during a halt they
suddenly were espied running away at top speed, and did not so much as
turn their heads.
“They’re leaving without their pay! Send and get them, so we can pay
them,” cried Captain Lewis.
Chaboneau grinned.
“Dey ’fraid of ze tim-tim rapids. Ze chief say no use to pay dem,
anyhow. His people take ever’t’ing from dem when dey go t’rough
village.”
Down, down, down with the swift current. The Koos-koos-kee joined the
other river, which, the captains figured, was the same river on whose
head-waters, far, far eastward, the camp of Chief Ca-me-ah-wait and
his Snakes had been located. The Lewis River did they name it, but on
modern maps it is the Snake.
Now on down, down, down the rushing Snake. There were rapids, where
once or twice a canoe or two was wrecked; but this sort of travel
was easier than travel over the mountains, and easier than travel
_up_ stream. Many Indians were seen, fishing for the salmon. They
were friendly, and much astonished. They sent runners to other
villages, below, telling of the coming of white men; sometimes Chiefs
Twisted-hair and Tetoh also ran ahead, along the bank, that the
Indians might be ready. And on shore the Indian women made much of
Sa-ca-ja-we-a and little Toussaint.
“If these white strangers travel with a woman and a baby, they cannot
be a war party,” reasoned the Indians.
Down, down; until soon after dinner, on October 16, this 1805, the
course of another large river, coming in from the north, was sighted
before. The Columbia! It must be the Columbia, at last! Hooray! Hooray!
Hooray! Old Cruzatte, in the leading canoe, struck up a gay French
boat-song; Drouillard and Lepage and Labiche and Chaboneau chimed in.
Faster flashed the paddles.
“We’ll land yonder,” shouted Captain Lewis, pointing to the right. “At
the junction. A lot of Indians seem to be waiting for us.”
“Thanks to Twisted-hair,” jubilated Pat. “Sure, I see him――an’ the
other wan, too. When they left they said they’d meet us at the Tim-tim,
didn’t they? An’ it’s a big river, by the looks.”
A great throng of Indians collected by Chiefs Twisted-hair and Tetoh
had collected on the shore just above where the two rivers joined. A
council, opened by a procession with drums, was held. These were Sokulk
Indians. They claimed to be kins-folk of the Twisted-hair Pierced
Noses, but their foreheads were flattened back so that their heads
ended in a peak, and therefore they were more like Flat-heads. They
were kind――and not very attractive, because their eyes were sore from
water glare and sun glare, and their teeth were bad from eating fish
and roots.
Yes, this was the Columbia. The two captains measured it, and the
Snake. The width of the Snake was 575 yards, but the width of the
Columbia was 960 yards.
“A noble stream,” remarked Captain Lewis. “I wonder how far to the
north it penetrates.”
“Did you ever see so many fish, dead and alive, in all your life,
Merne?” exclaimed Captain Clark. “Why, the water swarms with them, and
I understand that the Indians use dried ones for fuel.”
“We’ll buy more dogs, nevertheless, Will,” smiled Captain Lewis. “The
men can’t row and make portages on fish flesh alone.”
A day and a half was spent with the curious Sokulks, here where
in southeastern Washington the Snake River unites with the mighty
Columbia, in the midst of a flat and pleasant plain. On October 18 the
five canoes swept out and down the Columbia itself.
“How far now, Pat?” asked Peter. “To the big ocean?”
“Thirty-siven hunderd miles have we come, by the captains’ reckonin’,”
answered Pat. “An’ belike ’tis four hunderd more to the Paycific.”
“What do we do then, Pat?”
“If there aren’t anny ships we’ll have to stay the winter. An’ in the
spring, barrin’ better luck, ’tis back we track over the four thousan’
moils ag’in.”
From the Sokulks had been procured another map, of the Columbia. It
showed many bad places――rapids and falls. Around some of these the
canoes had to be carried; through others they had to be hauled by hand,
or carefully lowered with ropes. The Indians ashore seemed very timid,
and hid.
Captain Clark returned in high humor, from a walk ahead with Chaboneau
and Sa-ca-ja-we-a, and Chiefs Twisted-hair and Tetoh. He had shot a
white crane, and a teal duck, and then had entered an Indian house
that had been closed against him. The Indians had bowed before him,
and covered their heads. When he had lighted his peace-pipe with his
sun-glass, they had cried aloud in terror.
“They thought me a god, Merne,” he laughed. “They had heard the gun,
had seen the two birds drop, and believed that I had dropped, too.
When I brought fire out of the sky, that finished the business. But I
quieted them with presents.”
However, near the mouth of a river, Chief Yellept of the Walla Walla
Indians welcomed the white men, and wished them to stay. Captain Lewis
said that they would visit him on their way back.
Chiefs Twisted-hair and Tetoh were sent ahead again, to assure the
Indians that the white men intended no harm.
The first big falls, reached on October 23, were not the Tim-tim. The
Tim-tim was still below. But Chief Twisted-hair said that the Indians
down there were strangers to him, and unfriendly. He had heard that
they were planning to attack the white men. And as he could not speak
their language he wished to return to his own people.
He was persuaded to stay――and Tetoh also――until the passage of the
Tim-tim.
These first falls or rapids were very difficult; but the captains and
old Cruzatte consulted together, and decided to run them with the boats.
“If ever’body follow me an’ do as I do, we get t’rough,” promised
Cruzatte, head boat-man.
So, with Cruzatte leading, down through the wild channel of the first
rapids in the Dalles of the Columbia raced the canoes. And from
the rocky shores the Eneeshur Indians opened their mouths wide in
astonishment.
“The Irish an’ Frinch together can lick the world,” boasted Pat.
But the place of Tim-tim, or “Timm,” for short, was close ahead. It was
reached the next evening, and they camped above it, at a village of the
Echeloots, or Chinook Indians, who also flattened their hats, and spoke
more cluckingly than did even the Oo-tla-shoots.
They were the enemies of the Pierced Noses, but they agreed upon peace,
in a council with Chief Twisted-hair. Now, after a final “smoke,”
Chiefs Twisted-hair and Tetoh left, on horses, for their home. They had
been good and faithful guides.
The place of Timm, at the foot of the Dalles of the Columbia, is to-day
called the Long Narrows. It was three miles long and in some stretches
only fifty yards wide. But the canoes, guided by Cruzatte, went through
without one being wrecked. They had been badly battered, however, by
the many rocks; and the next day was spent in caulking them. That
night Cruzatte brought out his fiddle, a dance was held, about the
fire, and the Echeloots appeared much entertained.
In the middle of the night, soon after the camp had gone to bed, Peter
was awakened by Pat’s suddenly squirming out of the blanket.
“The fleas are ’atin’ me entoirely,” declared Pat. “Into the river goes
ivery stitch o’ me clothes.”
Peter was glad to follow the example. By morning nearly all the men
were stripped, and needs must stalk about in blankets while their
clothing was being cleaned.
“’Twas the mosquitoes east of the mountains,” laughed George Shannon.
“Now ’tis the fleas west of the mountains.”
But the fleas were a slight matter, when amidst grand scenery the
Columbia River ever bore the canoes onward, toward the ocean and the
end of the long, long journey.
After the Echeloots (whom the violin and the dancing had so entertained),
more Indians were met. The banks of this Columbia were thickly populated.
These Indians lived in wooden houses, too――houses walled and raftered
with planks faced and trimmed by fire or by knives and little axes. The
houses were furnished with bedsteads.
“As good houses as some settlers’ houses back in the Illinois country,”
declared Captain Clark, who was constantly exploring among them.
The canoes that the Indians cleverly managed were large, hollowed from
a single log, with high bows curving upward; farther on down, bows and
sterns both were high, and had figures of men and beasts. Some of the
Indians owned articles of white men’s manufacture, which they said came
from below.
“What you say dese hyar Injuns call demselves, Marse Will?” York was
heard to ask.
“Skilloots, York.”
“An’ what were dose we met ’foh we met dese Galoots?”
“The Chilluckittequaws, York.”
“Jes’ so,” gasped York. “But _I_ ain’t gwine to say it.”
On November 2 the canoes were partly carried around, partly slid
through, the rapids which formed the foot of other rapids termed by the
captains the Great Shute. Presently the river opened two miles wide,
and smooth and placid. That night the water rose nine inches on a stake
set at the river’s edge in front of the camp.
“We’re in tidewater, lads!” announced Captain Lewis. “The ocean tides
ascend this far. That means there are no more rapids; the ocean itself
can’t be very distant.”
Each night after this a stake was set out and the rise measured. Each
day the men sniffed for the smell of salt water and listened for the
sound of the surf. Sa-ca-ja-we-a was very much excited; she had come
especially to see the big water.
During the night of November 4 the rise from the tide was two feet;
the next night’s rise was four feet. Ducks and geese were many. But it
rained almost every day, and every morning a fog hung low.
On the morning of November 7 the camp rose and breakfasted in a wet
mist so dense that it hung on all sides like a gray curtain.
“At this rate,” quoth Pat, as the canoes headed out into the silence,
“we’re liable to get half way to Chiny afore we know we’re on the
Paycific at all.”
“I do believe I smell salt, though,” asserted George Shannon,
sniffing. “Sa-ca-ja-we-a’s been insisting, too, that she could hear a
‘boom-boom.’”
“Listen!” bade Pat――and they paused on their oars. Peter thought that
he also could hear a “boom-boom,” low and dull, but he wasn’t certain.
They went on.
The captains’ boat was being piloted by a Wah-kia-cum Indian, now: a
squat ugly man who wore a queer round jacket that, according to the
men, had come from a ship. The river was growing wider, the fog was
thinning and lifting――on a sudden the crew of the captains’ boat waved
their hats, pointed before, cheered wildly. The cheer passed from boat
to boat. For the fog ahead had swirled into fragments, and below it was
an expanse of tumbling gray water on which the sun was trying to shine.
Occasionally sounded a muffled “boom,” like the faint growl of summer
thunder.
The Pacific Ocean! But they did not reach it this day; the fog closed
in again, and the rain. They did not reach it the next day, although
the waves were so high in this, the mouth of the Columbia, that half
the party were seasick; and the water was salty. They did not reach
it the next day, nor the next. Wind and rain kept beating them back.
Sa-ca-ja-we-a was frightened.
“The spirits are angry. They do not want us here,” she whimpered,
crouching over little Toussaint, under a grass mat raised on a pole.
“The only way we’ll reach the sea is to be washed into it,” groaned
Pat. “Sure, don’t the very stones an’ logs come a-rollin’ down the
hills? Now for the first time I wish I hadn’t started, an’ here I am at
the ind!”
Yes, miserable were they all. There was no chance to dry clothing and
food, and scarcely an opportunity to stir. The mouth of the river
formed a wind-swept bay miles wide. The captains thought that if camp
might only be moved around a point ahead, and to a high sand beach,
it would be more comfortable. A deserted Indian village stood there,
with no inhabitants “except fleas”; and, as Pat said: “We’ll be all the
warmer for the exercise they give us.”
Not until the afternoon of November 15 did the opportunity to move
come. The sky cleared, the wind suddenly dropped; the canoes were
reloaded in a hurry, and the point was rounded.
Now the ocean was in full sight, outside the bay; from the boards of
the Indian houses rude cabins were erected; hunters and explorers were
sent out.