- "The Chopunnish Or Pierced-Nose Nation, Who Reside On The Kooskooskee And Lewis' [Snake] Rivers, Are In Person Stout, Portly, Well-Looking Men; The Women Are Small, With Good Features And Generally Handsome, Though The Complexion Of Both Sexes Is Darker Than That Of The Tushepaws.

In dress they resemble that nation, being fond of displaying their ornaments. The buffalo or elk-skin robe decorated

With beads; sea-shells, chiefly mother-of-pearl, attached to an otter-skin collar and hung in the hair, which falls in front in two cues; feathers, paints of different kinds, principally white, green, and light blue, all of which they find in their own country; these are the chief ornaments they use. In the winter they wear a short skirt of dressed skins, long painted leggings and moccasins, and a plait of twisted grass round the neck. The dress of the women is more simple, consisting of a long shirt of argalia [argali] or ibex [bighorn] skin, reaching down to the ankles, without a girdle; to this are tied little pieces of brass, shells, and other small articles; but the head is not at all ornamented.

"The Chopunnish have very few amusements, for their life is painful and laborious; all their exertions are necessary to earn even their precarious subsistence. During the summer and autumn they are busily occupied in fishing for salmon and collecting their winter store of roots. In winter they hunt the deer on snow-shoes over the plains, and toward spring cross the mountains to the Missouri for the purpose of rafficking for buffalo-robe.

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