- "We Had Scarcely Encamped When Three Young Men Came Up From The Wollawollah Village, With A Steel-Trap Which Had

Inadvertently been left behind, and which they had come a whole day's journey in order to restore. This act of

Integrity was the more pleasing, because, though very rare among Indians, it corresponded perfectly with the general behavior of the Wollawollahs, among whom we had lost carelessly several knives, which were always returned as soon as found. We may, indeed, justly affirm, that of all the Indians whom we had met since leaving the United States, the Wollawollahs were the most hospitable, honest, and sincere."

Chapter XXI

Overland east of the Columbia

It was now early in May, and the expedition, travelling eastward along Touchet Creek, were in the country of their friends, the Chopunnish. On the third, they were agreeably surprised to meet Weahkootnut, whom they had named Bighorn from the fact that be wore a born of that animal suspended from his left arm. This man was the first chief of a large band of Chopunnish, and when the expedition passed that way, on their path to the Pacific, the last autumn, he was very obliging and useful to them, guiding them down the Snake, or Lewis River. He had now heard that the white men were on their return, and he had come over across the hills to meet them. As we may suppose, the meeting was very cordial, and Weahkootnut turned back with his white friends and accompanied them to the mouth of the Kooskooskee, a stream of which our readers have heard before; it is now known as the Clearwater.

Captain Lewis told Weahkootnut that his people were hungry, their slender stock of provisions being about exhausted. The chief told them that they would soon come to a Chopunnish house where they could get food. But the journal has this entry: -

"We found the house which Weahkootnut had mentioned, where we halted for breakfast. It contained six families, so miserably poor that all we could obtain from them were two lean dogs and a few large cakes of half-cured bread, made of a root resembling the sweet potato, of all which we contrived to form a kind of soup. The soil of the plain is good, but it has no timber. The range of southwest mountains is about fifteen miles above us, but continues to lower, and is still covered with snow to its base. After giving passage to Lewis' [Snake] River, near their northeastern extremity, they terminate in a high level plain between that river and the Kooskooskee. The salmon not having yet called them to the rivers, the greater part of the Chopunnish are now dispersed in villages through this plain, for the purpose of collecting quamash and cows, which here grow in great abundance, the soil being extremely fertile, in many places covered with long-leaved pine, larch, and balsam-fir, which contribute to render it less thirsty than the open, unsheltered plains."

By the word "cows," in this sentence, we must understand that the story-teller meant cowas, a root eaten by the Indians and white explorers in that distant region.

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