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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