Cameahwait, Being Told That His White
Friends Would Now Need Twenty More Horses, Said That He Would
Do What He Could To Help Them.
The journal here adds:
-
"In order not to lose the present favorable moment, and to keep the Indians
as cheerful as possible, the violins were brought out and our men danced,
to the great diversion of the Indians. This mirth was the more welcome
because our situation was not precisely that which would most dispose us
to gayety; for we have only a little parched corn to eat, and our means
of subsistence or of success depend on the wavering temper of the natives,
who may change their minds to-morrow. . . .
"The Shoshonees are a small tribe of the nation called the Snake Indians,
a vague appellation, which embraces at once the inhabitants of the southern
parts of the Rocky Mountains and of the plains on either side.
The Shoshonees with whom we now were amount to about one hundred warriors,
and three times that number of women and children. Within their own
recollection they formerly lived in the plains, but they have been
driven into the mountains by the Pahkees, or the roving Indians of
the Sascatchawan, and are now obliged to visit occasionally, and by stealth,
the country of their ancestors. Their lives, indeed, are migratory.
From the middle of May to the beginning of September they reside on
the headwaters of the Columbia, where they consider themselves perfectly
secure from the Pahkees, who have never yet found their way to that retreat.
During this time they subsist chiefly on salmon, and, as that fish disappears
on the approach of autumn, they are driven to seek subsistence elsewhere.
They then cross the ridge to the waters of the Missouri, down which they
proceed slowly and cautiously, till they are joined near the Three Forks
by other bands, either of their own nation or of the Flatheads, with whom
they associate against the common enemy. Being now strong in numbers,
they venture to hunt the buffalo in the plains eastward of the mountains,
near which they spend the winter, till the return of the salmon invites them
to the Columbia. But such is their terror of the Pahkees, that, so long
as they can obtain the scantiest subsistence, they do not leave the interior
of the mountains; and, as soon as they have collected a large stock
of dried meat, they again retreat, thus alternately obtaining their food
at the hazard of their lives, and hiding themselves to consume it.
"In this loose and wandering life they suffer the extremes of want;
for two thirds of the year they are forced to live in the mountains,
passing whole weeks without meat, and with nothing to eat but a few
fish and roots. Nor can anything be imagined more wretched than their
condition at the present time, when the salmon is fast retiring,
when roots are becoming scarce, and they have not yet acquired strength
to hazard an encounter with their enemies.
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