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"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.
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