"The Mountains, Which, From The Great Shoot To This Place,
Are High, Rugged, And Thickly Covered With Timber,
Chiefly Of The Pine Species, Here Leave The River On Each Side;
The River Becomes Two And One-Half Miles In Width; The Low Grounds
Are Extensive And Well Supplied With Wood.
The Indians whom
we left at the portage passed us on their way down the river,
and seven others, who were descending in a canoe for the purpose
of trading below, camped with us.
We had made from the foot
of the great shoot twenty-nine miles to-day. The ebb tide rose
at our camp about nine inches; the flood must rise much higher.
We saw great numbers of water-fowl, such as swan, geese, ducks of
various kinds, gulls, plovers, and the white and gray brant,
of which last we killed eighteen."
Chapter XVII
From Tidewater to the Sea
Near the mouth of the river which the explorers named Quicksand River
(now Sandy), they met a party of fifteen Indians who had lately been down
to the mouth of the Columbia. These people told the white men that they
had seen three vessels at anchor below, and, as these must needs be American,
or European, the far-voyaging explorers were naturally pleased.
When they had camped that night, they received other visitors of whom
the journal makes mention: -
"A canoe soon after arrived from the village at the foot of the last rapid,
with an Indian and his family, consisting of a wife, three children,
and a woman who had been taken prisoner from the Snake Indians,
living on a river from the south, which we afterward found to be
the Multnomah. Sacajawea was immediately introduced to her, in hopes that,
being a Snake Indian, they might understand each other; but their language
was not sufficiently intelligible to permit them to converse together.
The Indian had a gun with a brass barrel and cock, which he appeared
to value highly."
The party had missed the Multnomah River in their way down,
although this is one of the three largest tributaries
of the Columbia, John Day's River and the Des Chutes being
the other two. A group of islands near the mouth of the
Multnomah hides it from the view of the passing voyager.
The stream is now more generally known as the Willamette,
or Wallamet. The large city of Portland, Oregon, is built
on the river, about twelve miles from its junction with
the Columbia. The Indian tribes along the banks of the Multnomah,
or Willamette, subsisted largely on the wappatoo, an eatable root,
about the size of a hen's egg and closely resembling a potato.
This root is much sought after by the Indians and is eagerly
bought by tribes living in regions where it is not to be found.
The party made great use of the wappatoo after they
had learned how well it served in place of bread.
They bought here all that the Indians could spare and then
made their way down the river to an open prairie where they
camped for dinner and found many signs of elk and deer.
The journal says:
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