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"We Cannot Learn Precisely The Nature Of The Trade Carried On
By The Indians With The Inhabitants Below.
But as their knowledge
of the whites seems to be very imperfect, and as the only articles
which they
Carry to market, such as pounded fish, bear-grass, and roots,
cannot be an object of much foreign traffic, their intercourse
appears to be an intermediate trade with the natives near the mouth
of the Columbia. From them these people obtain, in exchange
for their fish, roots, and bear-grass, blue and white beads,
copper tea-kettles, brass armbands, some scarlet and blue robes,
and a few articles of old European clothing. But their great
object is to obtain beads, an article which holds the first place
in their ideas of relative value, and to procure which they will
sacrifice their last article of clothing or last mouthful of food.
Independently of their fondness for them as an ornament, these beads
are the medium of trade, by which they obtain from the Indians still
higher up the river, robes, skins, chappelel bread, bear-grass, etc.
Those Indians in turn employ them to procure from the Indians
in the Rocky Mountains, bear-grass, pachico-roots, robes, etc.
"These Indians are rather below the common size, with high cheek-bones;
their noses are pierced, and in full dress ornamented with a
tapering piece of white shell or wampum about two inches long.
Their eyes are exceedingly sore and weak; many of them have
only a single eye, and some are perfectly blind.
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