“The white men are coming back! The white men are coming!” sped the
glad word among the Cho-pun-nish or Pierced Noses, in their villages
100 miles up, on the Kooskooskee. “They will make us well.”
And the white men were indeed coming, by the trail from the Walla Walla,
with the Snake Indian prisoner and Sa-ca-ja-we-a as interpreters; with
the Skilloot and the three Walla Walla young men as guides (for the
Pierced Nose and family had taken another trail); with some twenty
horses, for the baggage, and for William Bratton, and for the men who
had sore feet; and with the healing medicine box containing, especially,
the celebrated eye-water.
“Let us wance get the horses we left with Twisted-hair an’ we’ll all
ride, b’gorry,” quoth Sergeant Pat, limping along.
“On ze Kamass Prairie dere will be plenty root, plenty game,” rejoiced
Chaboneau. “An’ mebbe dere we rest, while leetle Toussaint get well.”
For little Toussaint seemed to be ailing.
First they were met, before reaching any village, by an old friend,
Chief We-ah-koo-nut, and ten warriors. We-ah-koo-nut was called the
Bighorn, because he always wore, hanging from his left arm, the horn
of a mountain ram.
“We have heard that you were coming, and have ridden to greet you,”
said Bighorn. “The sight of you makes our sore eyes well. We have
no food for you here, but to-morrow you will reach a lodge where
everything will be supplied.”
Before breakfast, in the morning, the lodge was found, on the bank of
the Lewis or Snake River; but the families living there could supply
only two dogs and some root bread.
Next was met Chief Tetoh, or Sky――the honest fellow who, with
Twisted-hair, had helped the expedition get through from the Kamass
Prairie to the Timm falls of the Columbia.
“Glad to see you. You are welcome,” exclaimed Tetoh.
“Where is Chief Twisted-hair? We have come to visit our friends, the
Pierced Noses, again, and to get our horses,” explained Captain Lewis.
“You must cross the Kin-oo-e-nim (Snake River), here, and go to
the Kooskooskee,” replied Chief Tetoh. “There you will find the
Twisted-hair, who has your horses.”
So they crossed, in canoes lent to them by Tetoh, and arrived at the
Kooskooskee or Clearwater.
“Eye-water, eye-water,” begged the Indians. Captain Clark traded a
small bottle of the eye-water for a gray mare.
“You’re the doctor, Will,” laughed Captain Lewis. “From now on we’d
better charge a fee. We’ll get more meat that way than with our guns or
goods.”
Accordingly Captain Clark, who handled the medicines, exchanged his
services for provisions. But the Indians appeared to be very poor, and
the “doctor’s” fees in dogs and horses and roots did not amount to much.
“Marse Will won’t nebber make a libbin’ at doctorin’, dat’s suah,”
finally admitted York, with a shake of his head. “Anyhow, he ain’t
killed anybody yet.”
Chief Twisted-hair’s village was up the Kooskooskee some miles. Chief
Sky, and another chief named Cut-nose, rode along with the captains.
When questioned about the horses and the saddles, they would give no
straight answer; but――――
“S’pose no get ’um horse, no get ’um saddle,” said Sa-ca-ja-we-a.
“Why is that?”
“Sho-sho-ne say he hear saddles gone, horses gone.”
That was alarming news.
“An’ Twisted-hair seemed like a fine gintleman,” bemoaned Sergeant Pat.
“We can get more horses, can’t we, Pat?” queried Peter. “We see lots of
horses.”
“Yes, an’ how’ll we buy ’em, when each man of us is down to a couple o’
needles, a bit of thread an’ a yard or so of ribbon, with a pinch o’
paint for an extry?” retorted Pat. “We’ll have to cut the buttons off
our clothes, I guess. Cross the mountains on foot ag’in we won’t an’
can’t. They’re waist-deep in snow.”
For the mountains were looming ahead, white and wintry, although this
was May.
“The Twisted-hair,” announced Chief Sky, pointing before. And Chief
Twisted-hair, with six men, met the procession.
Twisted-hair was not at all in a good humor. He refused to shake hands,
he scarcely noticed the captains, and suddenly he and Cut-nose (a very
ugly man whose nose had been laid open by a Snake lance, in battle)
were quarreling in a loud voice.
“What’s this all about, Chaboneau?” demanded Captain Lewis. “Ask
Sa-ca-ja-we-a to have the Sho-sho-ne interpret.”
“Ze Sho-sho-ne will not,” reported Chaboneau. “He say dees is quarrel
between two chiefs an’ he haf no right to interfere.”
“We’ll go on a bit and camp and hold a council, Will,” directed Captain
Lewis to Captain Clark. “Then we’ll get at the bottom of this business.
There’s evidently something wrong with the horses and saddles we left.”
At camp the captains first smoked and talked with Twisted-hair. He said
it was true that the horses were scattered, but Cut-nose and another
chief, the Broken-arm, were to blame. They had been jealous of him
because he had the white men’s horses; and being an old man, he had
given up the horses. Some were near, and some were at the village of
the Broken-arm, a half-day’s march east. As for the saddles, the cache
had fallen in and they might have been stolen, but he had hidden them
again.
Then the Cut-nose talked. He said that the Twisted-hair was a bad old
man, of two faces; that he had not taken care of the horses but had
let his young men ride them, to hunt, until the Broken-arm, who was a
higher chief, and he, Cut-nose, had forbidden.
“It is not well that the chiefs quarrel,” reproved Captain Lewis. “Only
children quarrel. We will take what horses there are here and we will
go on to the village of the Broken-arm, for the other horses.”
This seemed to satisfy everybody. Twisted-hair’s young men brought in
twenty-one of the forty-three horses and half the saddles, besides some
of the powder and lead that had been buried, also. That night Cut-nose
and Twisted-hair slept together.
The Broken-arm and his Nez Percés lived in one large straw-and-mud
house 150 feet long. Over it was flying the United States flag that had
been given to the nation on the way down last fall. Broken-arm ordered
a hide tent erected for the white chiefs; his women hastened there with
roots and fish; and when the captains offered to trade a lean horse for
a fat one which might be killed, Broken-arm declined.
“When our guests come hungry, we do not sell them food,” he declared.
“We have many young horses. All those you see on these plains belong
to me and my people. Take what you need for food.”
“Niver before did we have the Injuns offer us somethin’ for nothin’,”
gasped Patrick Gass. “At laste, niver before were we told to go help
ourselves!”
“The Walla Wallas were as obliging. Don’t forget the Walla Wallas, and
Yellept,” reminded George Shannon.
Two weeks were spent near the big house of the Broken-arm, for whom
another name was Black Eagle. Captain Clark was appointed official
doctor; he had fifty patients at a time. Captain Lewis held a council,
and told the warriors about the United States. They promised to make
peace with the Sho-sho-nes. Labiche killed a bear.
“These are great hunters. They kill the bear, alone,” exclaimed the
Pierced Noses.
Hunters were sent out every day, to get bear, and deer, and
elk――whatever they could. The other men were sent out to trade for
roots and fish.
Little Toussaint grew better. William Bratton could not walk, but he
was put into a hut of boughs and blankets built over a hole in which
there had been a fire. Water was sprinkled into the hole. The hot
steam soaked William through and through. He was then plunged into
cold water, and sweated again in the hut. This was Indian treatment,
not white man’s. And it cured Bratton, after even Doctor Red Head had
failed.
Most of the saddles and all the horses except two were delivered. These
two, said Broken-arm, had been stolen last fall by old Toby and his son
on their way back to Chief Ca-me-ah-wait. There now were sixty-five
horses on hand――enough for the baggage and for the men. Everybody
might ride. So much food had been purchased, that buttons (as Pat had
predicted) were being traded in, and John Shields, blacksmith, was
making awls out of the links of a beaver-trap chain.
“We must start on, or we won’t reach Fort Mandan before winter,”
announced Captain Lewis.
“No, no,” objected Twisted-hair and Sky, and all. “Too much snow. Much
water come down. The trail over the mountains is not open. Wait till
the next full moon, and the snows will have melted.”
“The salmon will soon be running up the river. Wait, and you shall have
food,” said Cut-nose.
“If the white chiefs are hungry, let them kill and eat my horses,” said
Chief Ho-has-til-pilp, the Red Wolf, with a wave of his arm.
“We thank the Red Wolf. But we shall need guides. Will the chiefs send
some young men with us, to show us the way over the mountains?” asked
Captain Lewis.
“When there is grass for the horses, on the Road-to-the-Buffalo, we
will send young men,” promised Chief Broken-arm. “But not until after
the grand council of all the Pierced Nose nation, on the Kamass
Prairie. In the summer we will all go to the buffalo plains of the
Missouri, if the white chiefs will protect us from the Snakes and
Pahkees.”
“Hold high the peace flag we have given you, and it will turn your
enemies into friends,” instructed Captain Lewis.
The Grand Council was not to be held for two or three weeks yet. By the
close of the first week of June the river had fallen six feet, showing
that the snows were partially melted. The captains decided to push
along without guides.
“We cannot wait till July and the full moon, boys,” declared Captain
Lewis, in an address to the company. “It’s only 160 miles from the
Kamass Prairie to our old camp on the other side at Traveler’s Rest
Creek, and there we’ll be done with the snow. If no guides overtake us,
Drouillard and Labiche and some of the rest of you are as good trailers
as the Indians, and can lead us through.”
“Hooray!” cheered all. They were as anxious as the captains to go.
They were in fine fettle. They had been playing prisoner’s base, among
themselves, and had been running foot-races with the Nez Percés, to
harden their muscles. In the races only one Indian had proved as fast
as Peter and John Colter, the American champions.
Now on June 10 camp was broken, and the march to the mountains begun.
“Ten days’ll see us through,” confidently declared Pat.