They Told The Two Chiefs That They Knew
We Were Not Men, For They Had Seen Us Fall From The
Clouds.
In fact, unperceived by them, Captain Clark had shot the white crane,
which they had seen fall just before
He appeared to their eyes:
the duck which he had killed also fell close by him;
and as there were some clouds flying over at the moment,
they connected the fall of the birds with his sudden appearance,
and believed that he had himself actually dropped from the clouds;
considering the noise of the rifle, which they had never
heard before, the sound announcing so extraordinary an event.
This belief was strengthened, when, on entering the room,
he brought down fire from the heavens by means of his burning-glass.
We soon convinced them, however, that we were merely mortals;
and after one of our chiefs had explained our history and objects,
we all smoked together in great harmony.
Chapter XVI
Down the Columbia to Tidewater
The voyagers were now drifting down the Columbia River, and they
found the way impeded by many rapids, some of them very dangerous.
But their skill in the handling of their canoes seems to have been
equal to the occasion, although they were sometimes compelled to go
around the more difficult rapids, making a short land portage.
When they had travelled about forty miles down the river, they landed
opposite an island on which were twenty-four houses of Indians;
the people, known as the Pishquitpahs, were engaged in drying fish.
No sooner had the white men landed than the Indians, to the number
of one hundred, came across the stream bringing with them
some firewood, a most welcome present in that treeless country.
The visitors were entertained with presents and a long smoke
at the pipe of peace. So pleased were they with the music of two
violins played by Cruzatte and Gibson, of the exploring party,
that they remained by the fire of the white men all night.
The news of the arrival of the white strangers soon spread,
and next morning about two hundred more of the Indians assembled
to gaze on them. Later in the day, having gotten away from their
numerous inquisitive visitors, the explorers passed down-stream
and landed on a small island to examine a curious vault,
in which were placed the remains of the dead of the tribe.
The journal says: -
"This place, in which the dead are deposited, is a building
about sixty feet long and twelve feet wide, formed by placing
in the ground poles or forks six feet high, across which a
long pole is extended the whole length of the structure;
against this ridge-pole are placed broad boards and pieces
of canoes, in a slanting direction, so as to form a shed.
It stands cast and west, and neither of the extremities is closed.
On entering the western end we observed a number of bodies wrapped
carefully in leather robes, and arranged in rows on boards,
which were then covered with a mat. This was the part destined
for those who had recently died; a little further on, bones half
decayed were scattered about, and in the centre of the building
was a large pile of them heaped promiscuously on each other.
At the eastern extremity was a mat, on which twenty-one skulls
were placed in a circular form; the mode of interment being
first to wrap the body in robes, then as it decays to throw
the bones into the heap, and place the skulls together.
From the different boards and pieces of canoes which form
the vault were suspended, on the inside, fishing-nets, baskets,
wooden bowls, robes, skins, trenchers, and trinkets of various kinds,
obviously intended as offerings of affection to deceased relatives.
On the outside of the vault were the skeletons of several horses,
and great quantities of their bones were in the neighborhood,
which induced us to believe that these animals were most probably
sacrificed at the funeral rites of their masters."
Just below this stand the party met Indians who traded with tribes
living near the great falls of the Columbia. That place they designated
as "Tum-tum," a word that signifies the throbbing of the heart.
One of these Indians had a sailor's jacket, and others had a blue
blanket and a scarlet blanket. These articles had found their way
up the river from white traders on the seashore.
On the twenty-first of October the explorers discovered a considerable
stream which appeared to rise in the southeast and empty into the Columbia
on the left. To this stream they gave the name of Lepage for Bastien Lepage,
one of the voyageurs accompanying the party. The watercourse, however,
is now known as John Day's River. John Day was a mighty hunter and
backwoodsman from Kentucky who went across the continent, six years later,
with a party bound for Astoria, on the Columbia. From the rapids below
the John Day River the Lewis and Clark party caught their first sight
of Mount Hood, a famous peak of the Cascade range of mountains, looming up
in the southwest, eleven thousand two hundred and twenty-five feet high.
Next day they passed the mouth of another river entering the Columbia from
the south and called by the Indians the Towahnahiooks, but known to modern
geography as the Des Chutes, one of the largest southern tributaries of
the Columbia. Five miles below the mouth of this stream the party camped.
Near them was a party of Indians engaged in drying and packing salmon.
Their method of doing this is thus described: -
"The manner of doing this is by first opening the fish and exposing
it to the sun on scaffolds. When it is sufficiently dried it
is pounded between two stones till it is pulverized, and is then
placed in a basket about two feet long and one in diameter,
neatly made of grass and rushes, and lined with the skin of a salmon
stretched and dried for the purpose.
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