Chapter XIV: Book II: Into the West (5)

After a day's adventure, they camped near a herd of elk in the beautiful moonlight. At noon, next day, they reached the salt-makers. Here Jo Fields, Bratton, and Gibson had their brass kettles under a rock arch, boiling and boiling seawater into a gallon of salt a day.

Hiring Twiltch, a young Indian, for guide, they climbed Tillamook Head, about thirty miles south of Cape Disappointment. Upon this promontory, Clark's Point of View, they paused before the boisterous Pacific, breaking with fury and flinging its waves above the Rock of Tillamook.

On one side the blue Columbia widened into bays studded with Chinook and Clatsop villages; on the other stretched rich prairies, enlivened by beautiful streams and lakes at the foot of the hills. Behind, in serried rank, the Douglas spruce--"the tree of Turner's dreams," the king of conifers,--stood monarch of the hills. Two hundred, three hundred feet in air they towered, a hundred feet without a limb, so dense that not a ray of sun could reach the ground beneath.

Sacajawea, save Pocahontas the most travelled Indian Princess in our history, spoke not a word, but looked with calm and shining eye upon the fruition of her hopes. Now she could go back to the Mandan towns and speak of things that Madame Jussaume had never seen, and of the Big Water beyond the Shining Mountains.

Down the steep and ragged rocks that overhung the sea, they clambered to a Tillamook village, where lay the great whale, stranded on the shore. Nothing was left but a skeleton, for from every Indian village within travelling distance, men and women were working like bees upon the huge carcass. Then home they went, trailing over the mountains, every squaw with a load of whale blubber on her back, to be for many a month the dainty of an Indian lodge.

These Indian lodges or houses were a source of great interest to Lewis and Clark. Sunk four feet into the ground and rising well above, like an out-door cellar, they were covered with ridgepoles and low sloping roofs. The sides were boarded with puncheons of cedar, laboriously split with elkhorn wedges and stone hammers.

A door in the gable admitted to this half-underground home by means of a ladder. Around the inner walls, beds of mats were raised on scaffolds two or three feet high, and under the beds were deposited winter stores of dried berries, roots, nuts, and fish.

In the centre of each house a fireplace, six or eight feet long, was sunk in the floor, and surrounded by a cedar fender and mats for the family to sit on. The walls, lined with mats and cedar bark, formed a very effective shelter.

Did some poor stranded mariner teach the savage this semi-civilised architecture, or was it evolved by his own genius? However this may be, these houses were found from Yaquina Bay to Yakutat.

In such a house as this Captain Clark visited Coboway, chief of the Clatsops, in his village on the sunny side of a hill. As soon as he entered, clean mats were spread. Coboway's wife, Tse-salks, a Tillamook Princess, brought berries and roots and fish on neat platters of rushes. Syrup of sallal berries was served in bowls of horn and meat in wooden trenchers.

Naturally, Sacajawea was interested in domestic utensils, wooden bowls, spoons of horn, skewers and spits for roasting meat, and beautifully woven water-tight baskets.

Every squaw habitually carried a knife, fastened to the thumb by a loop of twine, to be hid under the robe when visitors came. These knives, bought of the traders, were invaluable to the Indian mother. With it she dug roots, cut wood, meat, or fish, split rushes for her flag mats and baskets, and fashioned skins for dresses and moccasins. Ever busy they were, the most patient, devoted women in the world.

Sacajawea, with her beautiful dress and a husband who sometimes carried the baby, was a new sort of mortal on this Pacific coast.

While they were conversing, a flock of ducks lit on the water. Clark took his rifle and shot the head off one. The astonished Indians brought the bird and marvelled. Their own poor flintlocks, loaded with bits of gravel when shot failed, often would not go off in cold weather, but here was "very great medicine." They examined the duck, the musket, and the small bullets, a hundred to the pound.

"Kloshe musquet! wake! kum-tux musquet! A very good musquet! No! do not understand this kind of musquet!"

Thus early is it a historical fact that the Chinook jargon was already established on the Pacific coast. This jargon, a polyglot of traders' tongues, like the old Lingua Franca of the Mediterranean, is used by the coast Indians to this day from the Columbia River to Point Barrow on the Arctic. And for its birth we may thank the Boston traders.

Chinooks, Clatsops, Tillamooks faced that stormy beach and lived on winter stores of roots, berries, fish, and dried meat. Their beautiful elastic bows of white cedar were seldom adequate to kill the great elk, so when the rush bags under the beds were empty, they watched for fish thrown up by the waves.

"Sturgeon is very good," said a Clatsop in English, peering and prying along the hollows of the beach. But the great whale, Ecola, that was a godsend to the poor people. Upon it now they might live until the salmon came, flooding the country with plenty.

Old Chief Coboway of the Clatsops watched those shores for sixty years. He did not tell this story to Lewis and Clark, but he told it to his children, and so it belongs here.

"An old woman came crying to the Clatsop village: 'Something on the shore! Behold, it is no whale! Two spruce trees stand upright on it. Ropes are tied to those spruce trees. Behold bears came out of it!' Then all the people ran. Behold the bears had built a fire of driftwood on the shore. They were popping corn. They held copper kettles in their hands. They had lids. The bears pointed inland and asked for water. Then two people took the kettles and ran inland. They hid. Some climbed up into the thing. They went down into the ship. It was full of boxes. They found brass buttons in a string half a fathom long. They went out. They set fire. The ship burned. It burned like fat. Then the Clatsops gathered the iron, the copper, and the brass. Then were the Clatsops rich."

One of these men was Ko-na-pe. He and his companion were held as slaves. Ko-na-pe was a worker in iron and could fashion knives and hatchets. From that time the Clatsops had knives. He was too great to be held as a slave, so the Clatsops gave him and his friend their liberty. They built a cabin at a place now known as New Astoria, but the Indians called it "Ko-na-pe," and it was known by that name long after the country was settled by the whites.

February had now arrived. For weeks every man not a hunter stood over the kettles with his deer-skin sleeves rolled up, working away at elkskins, rubbing, dipping, and wringing. Then again they went back into the suds for another rubbing and working, and then the beautiful skin, hung up to smoke and dry, came out soft and pliable.

Shields, the skilful, cut out the garments with a butcher knife, and all set to work with awls for needles and deer sinews for thread.

For weeks this leather-dressing and sewing had been going on, some using the handy little "housewives" given by Dolly Madison and the ladies of the White House, until Captain Lewis records, "the men are better fitted with clothing and moccasins than they have been since starting on this voyage."

Captain Lewis and Captain Clark had each a large coat finished of the skin of the "tiger cat," of which it "took seven robes to make a coat."

With beads and old razors, Captain Lewis bought high-crowned Chinook hats, of white cedar-bark and bear-grass, woven European fashion by the nimble fingers of the Clatsop girls, fine as Leghorn and water-tight.

Patrick Gass counted up the moccasins and found three hundred and fifty-eight pairs, besides a good stock of dressed elkskins for tents and bedding. "And I compute 131 elk and 20 deer shot in this neighbourhood during the winter," he added.

But now the elk were going to the mountains, game was practically unobtainable. Now and then Drouillard snared a fine fat beaver or an otter in his traps; sometimes the Indians came over with sturgeon, fresh anchovies, or a bag of wapato, but even this supply was precarious and uncertain.

February 11, Captain Clark completed a map of the country, including rivers and mountains from Fort Mandan to Clatsop, dotting in cross-cuts for the home journey, the feat of a born geographer.

February 21 the saltmakers returned, with twelve gallons of salt sealed up to last to the _cache_ on the Jefferson.

While Shields refitted the guns, others opened and examined the precious powder. Thirty-five canisters remained, and yet, banged as they had been over many a mountain pass, and sunk in many a stream, all but five were found intact as when they were sealed at Pittsburg. Three were bruised and cracked, one had been pierced by a nail, one had not been properly sealed, but by care the men could dry them out and save the whole.

The greatest necessity now was a boat. A long, slim Chinook canoe made out of a single tree of fir or cedar was beyond price. Preliminary dickers were tried with Chinooks and Clatsops. Finally Drouillard went up to Cathlamet.

Of all the trinkets that Drouillard could muster, nothing short of Captain Lewis's laced uniform coat could induce Queen Sally's people to part with a treasured canoe. And here it was. Misfortune had become a joke.

"Well, now, the United States owes me a coat," laughed Lewis, as he found his last civilised garment gone to the savages.

"Six blue robes, one of scarlet, five made out of the old United States' flag that had floated over many a council, a few old clothes, Clark's uniform coat and hat and a few little trinkets that might be tied in a couple of handkerchiefs," this was the reserve fund to carry them two thousand miles to St. Louis.

But each stout-hearted explorer had his gun and plenty of powder--that was wealth.

"Now, in case we never reach the United States," said Lewis, "what then?"

"We must leave a Memorial," answered Clark. And so the Captains prepared this document:

_"The object of this list is, that through the medium of
some civilised person, who may see the same, it may be made
known to the world, that the party consisting of the
persons whose names are hereunto annexed, and who were sent
out by the Government of the United States to explore the
interior of the continent of North America, did penetrate
the same by the way of the Missouri and Columbia rivers, to
the discharge of the latter into the Pacific ocean, where
they arrived on the 14th day of November, 1805, and
departed the 23d day of March, 1806, on their return to the
United States by the same route by which they had come
out."_

To this document every man signed his name, and copies were given to the various chiefs. One was posted at Fort Clatsop to be given to any trader that might arrive in the river, and thus, in case of their death, some account of their exploration might be saved to the world. On the back of some of the papers Clark sketched the route.

At last only one day's food remained. Necessity compelled removal. In vain their eyes were strained toward the sea. Never were Lewis and Clark destined to see a summer day on the Columbia, when sails of ships flapped listlessly against the masts, and vessels heaved reluctantly on the sluggish waters, rolling in long swells on Clatsop beach.

On Sunday, March 23, 1806, the boats were loaded and all was ready. Chief Coboway came over at noon to bid them good bye.

In gratitude for many favours during the past winter, Lewis and Clark presented their houses and furniture to the kind-hearted old chief.

Chief Coboway made Fort Clatsop his winter home during the remainder of his life. Years passed. The stockade fell down, young trees grew up through the cabins, but the spring is there still, gushing forth its waters, cool as in the adventurous days of one hundred years ago.

XX

_A RACE FOR EMPIRE_

In this very December of 1805 while Lewis and Clark were struggling with the storms of ocean at the mouth of the Columbia, a thousand miles to the north of them the indefatigable and indomitable Simon Fraser was also building a fort, among the lochs and bens of New Caledonia, the British Columbia of to-day.

On the very day that Lewis and Clark left Fort Mandan, Simon Fraser and his men had faced toward the Rockies. While Lewis and Clark were exploring the Missouri, Fraser and his voyageurs were pulling for dear life up the Saskatchewan and over to Athabasca. On the very day that Lewis and Clark moved into Fort Clatsop, Simon Fraser, at the Rocky Mountain Portage, had men busily gathering stones "to get a chimney built for his bedroom." The icy northern winter came down, but in January mortar was made to plaster his trading fort, the Rocky Mountain Portage at the Peace River Pass.

All that Arctic winter he traded with the natives, killed deer and moose, and made pemmican for an expedition still farther to the west.

All through the stormy, icy April, building his boats and pounding his pemmican, Fraser stamped and stormed and swore because the snows refused to melt--because the rivers yet were blocked with ice.

The boats were at the door, the bales of goods were tied, when the ice began to break in May.

The moment the river was clear all hands were roused at daybreak. Simon Fraser turned the Rocky Mountain Portage over to McGillivray, who had arrived on snow shoes, and pressed on west, discovering McLeod Lake and building Fort McLeod upon its shores. Then he portaged over to the Fraser, which he believed to be the Columbia, and going up the Stuart branch built Fort St. James on Stuart Lake. During the winter and summer, after Lewis and Clark reached home, he built Fort Fraser on Fraser Lake, and Fort George upon the Fraser River, still thinking it was the Columbia.

"Now will I reach the mouth of this Columbia," said Fraser in the Spring of 1808, launching his boat, the _Perseverance_, upon the wildest water of the North.

"You cannot pass," said the Indians, and they waved and whirled their arms to indicate the mad tumultuous swirling of the waters.

"Whatever the obstacle," said Simon Fraser, "I shall follow this river to the end," and down he went for days and days through turbulent gulfs and whirlpools, past rocks and rapids and eddies, under frowning, overhanging precipices in the high water of May.

The Indians spoke of white people.

"It must be Lewis and Clark," groaned Fraser, redoubling his effort to win another empire for his king.

Daily, hourly, risking their lives, at every step in the Mountains the Indians said, "You can go no further."

But the sturdy Scotchmen gripped their oars and set their teeth, turning, doubling, twisting, shooting past rocky points that menaced death, portaging, lifting canoes by sheer grit and resolution up almost impassable rockways, over cliffs almost without a foothold and down into the wave again. So ran the Northwesters down the wild river to the sea, and camped near the present site of New Westminster. And lo! it was _not_ the Columbia.

Back came Simon Fraser to Fort William on Lake Superior to report what he had done, and they crowned his brow with the name of his own great river, the Fraser.

Travellers look down the frowning Fraser gorge to-day, and little realise why Simon Fraser made that daring journey.

XXI

_"A SHIP! A SHIP!"_

While Lewis and Clark were making preparations to leave Fort Clatsop, all unknown to them a ship was trying to cross the bar into the Columbia River. And what a tale had she to tell,--of hunger, misery, despair, and death at Sitka.

Since 1787 the Boston ships had been trading along these shores. In that year 1792, when Captain Robert Gray discovered the Columbia River, there were already twenty-one American ships in the Pacific northwest.

In May, 1799, the Boston brig _Caroline_, Captain Cleveland, was buying furs in Sitka Sound, when coasting along over from the north came the greatest of all the Russians, Alexander von Baranof, with two ships and a fleet of bidarkas.

"What now will you have?" demanded the Sitka chief, as the expedition entered the basin of Sitka Sound.

"A place to build a fort and establish a settlement for trade," answered Baranof.

"A Boston ship is anchored below and buying many skins," answered the chief. But presents were distributed, a trade was made, and Russian axes began felling the virgin forest on the sides of Verstova.

The next day Captain Cleveland visited Baranof at his fort building.

"Savages!" echoed Captain Cleveland to Baranof's comment on the natives. "I should say so. I have but ten men before the mast, but on account of the fierce character of these Indians I have placed a screen of hides around the ship, that they may not see the deck nor know how few men I have. Two pieces of cannon are in position and a pair of blunderbusses on the taffrail."

But the land was rich in furs. It was this that brought Baranof over from Kadiak.

In three years Sitka was a strong fort, but in June, 1802, in the absence of Baranof, it was attacked one day by a thousand Indians armed with muskets bought of the Boston traders.

In a few hours the fort, a new ship in the harbour, warehouses, cattle sheds, and a bathhouse were burnt to ashes. The poor dumb cattle were stuck full of lances.

A terrible massacre accompanied the burning. To escape suffocation the Russians leaped from the flaming windows only to be caught on the uplifted lances of the savage Sitkas. Some escaped to the woods, when an English vessel providentially appeared and carried the few remaining survivors to Kadiak.

That autumn two new ships arrived from Russia with hunters, labourers, provisions, and news of Baranof's promotion by the czar.

Tears coursed down the great man's weather-beaten cheeks. "I am a nobleman; but Sitka is lost! I do not care to live; I will go and either die or restore the possessions of my august benefactor."

Then back came Baranof to Sitka on his errand of vengeance, with three hundred bidarkas and six small Russian ships, to be almost wrecked in Sitka Sound. Here he was joined by the _Neva_ just out from Kronstadt, the first to carry the Russian flag around the world.

Upon the hill where Sitka stands to-day, the Indians had built a fort of logs piled around with tangled brush. On this the Russians opened fire. But no reply came. With one hundred and fifty men and several guns, Baranof landed in the dense woods to take the fort by storm. Then burst the sheeted flame. Ten Russians were killed and twenty-six wounded. But for the fleet, Baranof's career would have ended on that day.

But in time ships with cannon were more than a match for savages armed with Boston muskets. Far into the night a savage chant was wafted into the air--the Alaskans had surrendered. At daylight all was still. No sound came from the shore, and when the Russians visited the Indian hill, the fort was filled with slaughtered bodies of infant children, slain by their own parents who felt themselves unable to carry them and escape. The Indian fort was immediately burned to the ground and on its site arose the Russian stronghold of Sitka Castle.

That new fort at Sitka was just finished and mounted with cannon the summer that Lewis and Clark came down the Columbia. Kitchen gardens were under cultivation and live stock thriving.

At Sitka that same autumn the _Elizaveta_ arrived, with the Russian Imperial Inspector of Alaska on board, the Baron von Rezanof, "Chamberlain of the Russian Court and Commander of all America," he called himself.

"What is this I hear of those Bostonians?" inquired the great Baron, unrolling long portraits of the Imperial family to be hung in Sitka Castle. "Those Bostonians, are they undermining our trade in furs with China?"

"Ah, yes," answered Count Baranof, "the American republic is greatly in need of Chinese goods, Chinese teas and silks, which formerly had to be purchased in coin. But since these shores have been discovered with their abundance of furs, they are no longer obliged to take coin with them, but load their vessels with products of their own country."

"All too numerous have become these Boston skippers on this northwest coast," continued Von Rezanof in a decisive tone. "Frequent complaints have been made to the American President that his people are selling firearms to our Indians, but all to no purpose. It is an outrage. We are justified in using force. I recommend an armed brig to patrol these waters."

Food supplies were low at Sitka that winter. No ship came. The _Elizaveta_ dispatched to Kadiak for supplies returned no more. No flour, no fish, not even seal blubber for the garrisons, could be caught or purchased. They were eating crows and eagles and devil-fish. Just then, when a hundred cannon were loaded to sweep the Yankee skippers from the sea, a little Rhode Island ship came sailing into Sitka harbour.

"Shall we expel these American traders from the North Pacific?" demanded Von Rezanof.

"For the love of God, no!" cried Baranof. "That little ship is our saviour!"

Into the starving garrison the Yankee Captain De Wolf brought bread and beef, and raised the famine siege of Sitka Castle. Baranof bought the little ship, the _Juno_, with all her cargo, for eight thousand dollars in furs and drafts on St. Petersburg. In addition Rezanof gave De Wolf a sloop, the _Ermak_, to carry his men and furs to the Hawaiian Islands.

"God grant that they may not have paid dear for their rashness in trusting their lives to such a craft!" exclaimed Von Rezanof, as the gallant Yankee Captain spread sail and disappeared from Sitka harbour.

The _Juno_, a staunch, copper-bottomed fast vessel of two hundred six tons, built at Bristol, Rhode Island, in 1799, was now fitted out for the Russian trade and dispatched to Kadiak.

The storms that Lewis and Clark heard booming on the Oregon coast that winter, devastated Alaskan shores as well. When the breakers came thundering up the rocks and the winds shook Sitka Castle, Count Baranof in his stronghold could not sleep for thinking, "Oh, the ships!--the ships out on this stormy deep, laden with what I need so much!"

The little _Juno_ returned from Kadiak with dried fish and oil, and news of disaster: "The _Elizaveta_ has been wrecked in a heavy gale. Six large bidarkas laden with furs on the way to you went down. Two hundred hunters have perished at sea. Our settlement at Yakutat has been destroyed by an Indian massacre."

"My God! My God!" Baranof cried, "how can we repair all these disasters!"

But ever and ever the gray sea boomed upon the shore where the wretched inmates of Sitka Castle were dying. The relief from the _Juno_ was only temporary. By February not a pound of bread a day dared they distribute to the men.

Long since Rezanof had declared they must have an agricultural settlement. Now he fixed his eye on the Columbia River. Sitting there in the dreary castle he was writing to the czar, little dreaming that in a hundred years his very inmost thought would be read in America.

Starvation at Sitka was imminent,--it was impossible to delay longer. Into the stormy sea Rezanof himself set the _Juno's_ sail on his way to the Columbia.

While Lewis and Clark were writing out the muster roll to nail to the wall at Fort Clatsop for any passing ship, Rezanof was striving to cross the Columbia bar. None could see beyond the mists. Contrary winds blew, it rained, it hailed.

Rezanof sighted the Columbia March 14, 1806, but the current drove him back. Again on the 20th he tried to enter, and on the 21st, but the stormy river, like a thing of life, beat him back and beat him back, until the Russian gave it up, and four days later ran into the harbour of San Francisco.

In June he returned with wheat, oats, pease, beans, flour, tallow, and salt to the famished traders at Sitka.

But notwithstanding all these troubles, in 1805-6 Baranof dispatched to St. Petersburg furs valued at more than five hundred thousand roubles.

More and more the Boston traders came back to Alaskan waters. Baranof often found it easier to buy supplies from Boston than from Okhotsk.

"Furnish me with Aleutian hunters and bidarkas and I will hunt on shares for you," proposed a Boston Captain.

"Agreed," said Baranof, and for years fleets of bidarkas under Boston Captains hunted and trapped and traded for sea otter southward along Pacific shores.

"These Boston smugglers and robbers!" muttered the Spaniards of California. "Where do they hide themselves all winter? We know they are on our shores but never a glimpse can we get of their fleet." Meanwhile the Boston traders on the coasts of California raked in the skins and furs, and sailing around by Hawaii reached Sitka in time for Spring sealing in the north.

Some hints of this reached the Russian Directory at St. Petersburg, but no one dared to interfere with Baranof.

Shipload after shipload of furs he sent home that sold for fabulous sums in the markets of Russia. The czar himself took shares and the Imperial navy guarded the Russias of North America.

All honour to Baranof, Viking of Sitka, and builder of ships! For forty years he ruled the Northwest, the greatest man in the North Pacific. His name was known on the coast of Mexico, even to Brazil and Havana. The Boston merchants consulted him in making up their cargoes. In 1810 he went into partnership with John Jacob Astor to exchange supplies for furs.

Above all disaster he rose, though ship after ship was lost. But it must be admitted the Russians were not such seamen as the gallant Boston skippers.

Never again will this land see more hardy sailors than the American tars that travelled the seas at the close of our Revolution. Our little Yankee brigs were creeping down and down the coast and around the Horn, until every village had its skippers in the far Pacific. Some went for furs and some for whales, and all for bold adventure.

In July, 1806, the _Lydia_, having just rescued two American sailors from the savages at Vancouver Island, came into the Columbia River for a load of spars, the beginning of a mighty commerce. Here they heard of Lewis and Clark, and ten miles up, faithful old Chief Coboway gave Captain Hill the muster roll left at Fort Clatsop. This, sent by way of China, reached the United States in 1807, to find the great explorers safe at home.

With the death of Baranof in 1819 ended the vast plan of Russia to make the northern half of the Pacific its own. Baranof was small and wrinkled and bald, but his eye had life. He would have made a czar like Peter the Great. To him and him alone was due the Russia of America, that for seven million dollars was sold to us in 1870, an empire in itself.

XXII

_BACK TO CIVILISATION_

The canoes were loaded, and at one o'clock in the afternoon of Sunday, the 23d day of March, 1806, Lewis and Clark took final leave of Fort Clatsop.

Back past Cathlamet they came, where Queen Sally still watched by her totem posts; past Oak Point on Fanny's Island, named by Clark, where two Springs later a Boston ship made the first white settlement in Oregon. Slowly the little flotilla paddled up, past Coffin Rock, immemorial deposit of Indian dead, past snowy St. Helens, a landmark at sea for the ship that would enter the harbour.

Flowers were everywhere, the hillsides aglow with red flowering currants that made March as gay as the roses of June. The grass was high, and the robins were singing.

At sunset, March 30, they camped on a beautiful prairie, the future site of historic Vancouver. Before them the Columbia was a shimmer of silver. Behind, rose the dim, dark Oregon forest. The sharp cry of the sea-gull rang over the waters, and the dusky pelican and the splendid brown albatross were sailing back to the sea.

Herds of elk and deer roamed on the uplands and in woody green islands below, where flocks of ducks, geese, and swans were digging up the lily-like wapato with their bills.

With laboured breath, still bending to the oar, on the first of April they encountered a throng of Indians crowding down from above, gaunt, hollow-eyed, almost starved, greedily tarrying to pick up the bones and refuse meat thrown from the camp of the whites.

"_Katah mesika chaco?_" inquired Captain Lewis.

"_Halo muck-a-muck_," answered the forlorn Indians. "Dried fish all gone. No deer. No elk. No antelope to the Nez Percé country." Hundreds were coming down for food at Wapato. "_Elip salmon chaco._"

"Until the salmon come!" That had been the cry of the Clatsops. The Chinooks were practising incantations to bring the longed-for salmon. The Cathlamets were spreading their nets. The Wahkiakums kept their boats afloat. Even the Multnomahs were wistfully waiting. And now here came plunging down all the upper country for wapato,--"Until the salmon come."

"And pray, when will that be?"

"Not until the next full moon,"--at least the second of May, and in May the Americans had hoped to cross the mountains. All the camp deliberated,--and still the Cascade Indians came flocking down into the lower valley.

"We must remain here until we can collect meat enough to last us to the Nez Percé nation," said the Captains, and so, running the gauntlet of starvation, it happened that Lewis and Clark camped for ten days near the base of Mt. Hood at the river Sandy. In order to collect as much meat as possible a dozen hunters were sent out; the rest were employed in cutting and hanging the meat to dry.

Two young Indians came into the camp at the Sandy.

"_Kah mesika Illahee?_--Where is your country?" was asked them, in the Chinook jargon caught at Clatsop.

"At the Falls of a great river that flows into the Columbia from the south."

"From the south? We saw no such river."

With a coal on a mat one of the Indians drew it. The Captains looked.

"Ah! behind those islands!" It was where the Multnomah chieftain in his war canoe had said, "Village there!" on their downward journey to the sea. Clark gave one of the men a burning glass to conduct him to the spot, and set out with seven men in a canoe.

Along the south side of the Columbia, back they paddled to the mysterious inlet hidden behind that emerald curtain. And along with them paddled canoe-loads of men, women, and children in search of food.

Clark now perceived that what they had called "Imagecanoe Island" consisted of three islands, the one in the middle concealing the opening between the other two.

Here great numbers of canoes were drawn up. Lifting their long, slim boats to their backs, the Indian women crossed inland to the sloughs and ponds, where, frightening up the ducks, they plunged to the breast into the icy cold water. There they stood for hours, loosening wapato with their feet. The bulbs, rising to the surface, were picked up and tossed into the boats to feed the hungry children.

Clark entered an Indian house to buy wapato.

"Not, not!" with sullen look they shook their heads. No gift of his could buy the precious wapato.

Deliberately then the captain took out one of Dr. Saugrain's phosphorus matches and tossed it in the fire. Instantly it spit and flamed.

"_Me-sah-chie! Me-sah-chie!_"--the Indians shrieked, and piled the cherished wapato at his feet. The screaming children fled behind the beds and hid behind the men. An old man began to speak with great vehemence, imploring his god for protection.

The match burned out and quiet was restored. Clark paid for the wapato, smoked, and went on, behind the islands.

As if lifting a veil the boat swept around the willows and the Indian waved his hand.

"Multnomah!"

Before them, vast and deep, a river rolled its smooth volume into the Columbia. At the same moment five snow peaks burst into view,--Rainier, Hood, St. Helens, Adams, and to the southeast another snowy cone which Clark at once saluted, "Mount Jefferson!"

For the first recorded time a white man gazed on the river Willamette.

This sudden vision of emerald hills, blue waters, and snowy peaks forced the involuntary exclamation, "The only spot west of the Rocky Mountains suitable for a settlement!" The very air of domestic occupation gleamed on the meadows flecked with deer and waterfall. Amid the scattered groves of oak and dogwood, bursting now into magnolian bloom, Clark half expected to see some stately mansion rise, as in the park of some old English nobleman. The ever-prevailing flowering currant lit the landscape with a hue of roses.

A dozen miles or more Clark pressed on, up the great inland river, and slept one night near the site of the present Portland. He examined the soil, looked at the timber, and measured a fallen fir three hundred and eighteen feet as it lay.

Watching the current rolling its uniform flow from some unknown distant source, the Captain began taking soundings.

"This river appears to possess water enough for the largest ship. Nor is it rash to believe that it may water the country as far as California." For at least two-thirds of the width he could find no bottom with his five-fathom line.

Along that wide deep estuary, the grainships of the world to-day ride up to the wharves of Portland. The same snow peaks are there, the same emerald hills, and the bounteous smile of Nature blushing in a thousand orchards.

All along the shores were deserted solitary houses of broad boards roofed with cedar bark, with household furniture, stone mortars, pestles, canoes, mats, bladders of train oil, baskets, bowls, trenchers--all left. The fireplaces were filled with dead embers, the bunk-line tiers of beds were empty. All had just gone or were going to the fisheries.

"And where?"

"To Clackamas nation. _Hyas tyee Tumwater._ Great Falls. Salmon."

Had Clark but passed a few miles further up, he would have found hundreds of Indians at the fishing rendezvous, Clackamas Rapids and Willamette Falls.

"How many of the Clackamas nation?"

"Eleven villages, to the snow peak."

"And beyond?"

"Forty villages, the Callapooias." With outstretched hand the Indian closed his eyes and shook his head,--evidently he had never been so far to the south.

Back around Warrior's Point Clark came, whence the Multnomahs were wont to issue to battle in their huge war canoes. An old Indian trail led up into the interior, where for ages the lordly Multnomahs had held their councils. Many houses had fallen entirely to ruin.

Clark inquired the cause of decay. An aged Indian pointed to a woman deeply pitted with the smallpox.

"All died of that. _Ahn-cutty!_ Long time ago!"

The Multnomahs lived on Wapato Island. A dozen nations gave fealty to Multnomah. All had symbolic totems, carved and painted on door and bedstead, and at every bedhead hung a war club and a Moorish scimitar of iron, thin and sharp, rude relic of Ko-na-pe's workshop.

Having now dried sufficient meat to last to the Nez Percés, Lewis and Clark set out for the Dalles, that tragical valley, racked and battered, where the devils held their tourneys when the world was shaped by flood and flame.

Through the sheeny brown basaltic rock, three rifts let through the river, where, in fishing time, salmon leaped in prodigious numbers, filling the Indians' baskets, tons and tons a day. But the salmon had not yet come.

At this season the upper tribes came down to the Dalles to traffic robes and silk grass for sea-shells and wapato. Fish was money. After the traders came, beads, beads, became the Indian's one ambition. For beads he would sacrifice his only garment and his last morsel of food.

In this annual traffic of east and west, the Dalles Indians had become traders, robbers, pirates. No canoe passed that way without toll. Dressed in deerskin, elk, bighorn, wolf, and buffalo, these savages lay now in wait for Lewis and Clark, portaging up the long narrows.

Tugging, sweating, paddling, poling, pulling by cords, it was difficult work hauling canoes up the narrow way.

Crowds of Indians pressed in.

"Six tomahawks and a knife are gone!"

"Another tomahawk gone!"

"Out of the road," commanded Lewis. "Whoever steals shall be shot instantly."

The crowds fell back. Every man toiled on with gun in hand. But from village to village, dishes, blankets, and whatever the Indians could get their hands on, disappeared. Soon there would be no baggage.

It seemed impossible to detect a thief. "Nothing but numbers protects us," said the white men.

Worse even than the pirates of the Sioux, it came almost to pitched battle. Again and again Lewis harangued the chiefs for the restoration of stolen property. Once he struck an Indian. Finally he set out to burn a village, but the missing property came to light, hidden in an Indian hut.

So long did it take to make these portages that food supplies failed. In the heart of a thickly populated and savage country the expedition was bankrupt.

With what gratitude, then, they met Yellept, chief of the Walla Wallas, waiting upon his hills.

"Come to my village. You shall have food. You shall have horses."

Gladly they accompanied him to his village at the mouth of the Walla Walla river. Immediately he called in not only his own but the neighbouring nations, urging them to hospitality. Then Chief Yellept, the most notable man in all that country, himself brought an armful of wood for their fires and a platter of roasted mullets.

At once all the Walla Wallas followed with armloads of fuel; the campfires blazed and crackled. Footsore, weary, half-starved, Lewis and Clark and their men supped and then slept.

Fortunately there was among the Walla Wallas a captive Shoshone boy who spoke the tongue of Sacajawea. In council the Captains explained themselves and the object of their journey.

"Opposite our village a shorter route leads to the Kooskooskee," said Yellept. "A road of grass and water, with deer and antelope."

Clark computed that this cut-off would save eighty miles.

In vain the Captains desired to press on.

"Wait," begged Yellept. "Wait." Already he had sent invitations to the Eyakimas, his friends the Black Bears, and to the Cayuses.

Possibly Sacajawea had hinted something; at any rate with a cry of "Very Great Medicine," the lame, the halt, the blind pressed around the camp. The number of unfortunates, products of Indian battle, neglect, and exposure, was prodigious.

Opening the medicine chest, while Lewis bought horses, Clark turned physician, distributing eye-water, splinting broken bones, dealing out pills and sulphur. One Indian with a contracted knee came limping in.

"My own father, Walla Walla chief," says old Se-cho-wa, an aged Indian woman on the Umatilla to-day. "Lots of children, lots of horses. I, very little girl, follow them."

With volatile liniments and rubbing the chief was relieved.

In gratitude Yellept presented Clark with a beautiful white horse; Clark in turn gave all he had--his sword.

Bidding the chief adieu, the Captains recorded: "We may, indeed, justly affirm, that of all the Indians whom we have met since leaving the United States the Walla Wallas were the most hospitable and sincere."

Poor old Yellept! One hundred years later his medal was found in the sand at the mouth of the Walla Walla. All his sons were slain in battle or died of disease. When the last one lay stretched in the grave, the old chief stepped in upon the corpse and commanded his people to bury them in one grave together.

"On account of his great sorrow," says old Se-cho-wa.

And so he was buried.

XXIII

_CAMP CHOPUNNISH_

As Lewis and Clark with twenty-three horses set out over the camas meadows that April morning a hundred years ago, the world seemed brighter for the kindness of the Walla Wallas.

At the Dalles the forest had ended. Now they were on the great Columbian plains that stretch to the Rockies, the northwest granary of to-day. The dry exhilarating air billowed the verdure like a sea.

Meadow larks sang and flitted. Dove-coloured sage hens, the cock of the plains, two-thirds the size of a turkey, cackled like domestic fowl before the advancing cavalcade. Spotted black-and-white pheasants pecked in the grass like the little topknot "Dominicks" the men had known around their boyhood homes.

And everywhere were horses.

"More hor-r-ses between th' Gr-reat Falls av th' Columby and th' Nez Percés than I iver saw in th' same space uv countery in me loife before," said Patrick Gass. "They are not th' lar-r-gest soize but very good an' active."

"Of an excellent race, lofty, elegantly formed, and durable," those Cayuse horses are described by Lewis and Clark. "Many of them appear like fine English coursers, and resemble in fleetness and bottom, as well as in form and colour, the best blooded horses of Virginia."

A hundred years ago, the Cayuse of the Columbian plains was a recent importation from the bluest blooded Arabian stock of Spain. White-starred, white-footed, he was of noble pedigree. Traded or stolen from tribe to tribe, these Spanish horses found a home on the Columbia. All winter these wild horses fattened on the plain; madly their Indian owners rode them; and when they grew old, stiff, and blind, they went, so the Indians said, to Horse Heaven on the Des Chutes to die.

Following the old Nez Percés trail, that became a stage road in the days of gold, and then a railroad, Lewis and Clark came to the land of the Nez Percés,--Chopunnish.

Thirty-one years later the missionary Spalding planted an apple-tree where Lewis and Clark reached the Snake at the mouth of Alpowa creek, May 4, 1806.

We-ark-koompt, the Indian express, came out to meet them. Over the camp of Black Eagle the American flag was flying. Chiefs vied with one another to do them honour. Tunnachemootoolt, Black Eagle, spread his leather tent and laid a parcel of wood at the door. "Make this your lodge while you remain with me." Hohastilpilp, Red Wolf, came riding over the hills with fifty people.

The Captains had a fire lighted, and all night in the leather tent on the banks of the Kooskooske the chiefs smoked and pondered on the journey of the white men.

Lewis and Clark drew maps and pointed out the far-away land of the President. Sacajawea and the Shoshone boy interpreted until worn out, and then fell asleep. And ever within Black Eagle's village was heard the dull "thud, thud, thud," of Nez Percé women pounding the camas and the kouse, "with noise like a nail-factory," said Lewis. All night long their outdoor ovens were baking the bread of kouse, and the kettles of camas mush, flavoured with yamp, simmered and sweetened over the dull red Indian fires. The hungry men were not disposed to criticise the cuisine of the savage, not even when they were offered the dainty flesh of dried rattlesnake!

Labiche killed a bear. In amazement the redmen gathered round.

"These bears are tremendous animals to the Indians,--kill all you can," said Captain Lewis. Elated, every hunter went bear-hunting.

"Wonderful men that live on bears!" exclaimed the Indians.

Again the council was renewed, and they talked of wars. Bloody Chief, fond of war, showed wounds received in battle with the Snakes.

"It is not good," said Clark. "It is better to be at peace. Here is a white flag. When you hold it up it means peace. We have given such flags to your enemies, the Shoshones. They will not fight you now."

Fifty years later, that chief, tottering to his grave, said, "I held that flag. I held it up high. We met and talked, but never fought again."

"We have confided in the white men. We shall follow their advice," Black Eagle went proclaiming through the village.

All the kettles of soup were boiling. From kettle to kettle Black Eagle sprinkled in the flour of kouse. "We have confided in the white men. Those who are to ratify this council, come and eat. All others stay away."

The mush was done, the feast was served; a new dawn had arisen on the Nez Percés.

Finding it impossible to cross the mountains, a camp was established at Kamiah Creek, on a part of the present Nez Percé reservation in Idaho county, Idaho, where for a month they studied this amiable and gentle people. Games were played and races run, Coalter outspeeding all. Frazer, who had been a fencing master in Rutland, back in Vermont, taught tricks, and the music of the fiddles delighted them.

Stout, portly, good-looking men were the Nez Percés, and better dressed than most savages, in their whitened tunics and leggings of deerskin and buffalo, moccasins and robes and breastplates of otter, and bandeaus of fox-skins like a turban on the brow. The women were small, of good features and generally handsome, in neatly woven tight-fitting grass caps and long buckskin skirts whitened with clay.

Upon the Missouri the eagle was domesticated. Here, too, the Nez Percé had his wicker coop of young eaglets to raise for their tail feathers. Any Rocky Mountain Indian would give a good horse for the black-and-white tail feather of a golden eagle. They fluttered from the calumet and hung in cascades from head to foot on the sacred war bonnet.

A May snowstorm whitened the camas meadows and melted again. Thick black loam invited the plough, but thirty Springs should pass before Spalding established his mission and gave ploughs to the redmen. Twisted Hair saw the advent of civilisation. Red Wolf planted an orchard. Black Eagle went to see Clark at St. Louis and died there.

Captain Lewis held councils, instructing, educating, enlightening the Kamiahs, so that to this day they are among the most advanced of Indian tribes.

Captain Clark, with simple remedies and some knowledge of medicine, became a mighty "tomanowos" among the ailing. With basilicons of pitch and oil, wax and resins, a sovereign remedy for skin eruptions, with horse-mint teas and doses of sulphur and cream-of-tartar, with eye-water, laudanum, and liniment, he treated all sorts of ills. Fifty patients a day crowded to the tent of the Red Head. Women suffering from rheumatism, the result of toil and exposure in the damp camas fields, came dejected and hysterical. They went back shouting, "The Red Head chief has made me well."

The wife of a chief had an abscess. Clark lanced it, and she slept for the first time in days. The grateful chief brought him a horse that was immediately slaughtered for supper. A father gave a horse in exchange for remedies for his little crippled daughter.

With exposure to winds, alkali sand, and the smoke of chimneyless fires, few Indians survived to old age without blindness.

"Eye-water! Eye-water!" They reached for it as for a gift from the gods. Clark understood such eyes, for the smoke of the pioneer cabin had made affections of the eye a curse of the frontier.

But affairs were now at their lowest. Even the medicines were exhausted, and the last awl, needle, and skein of thread had gone. Off their shabby old United States uniforms the soldiers cut the last buttons to trade for bread. But instead of trinkets the sensible Nez Percés desired knives, buttons, awls for making moccasins, blankets, kettles. Shields the gunsmith ingeniously hammered links of Drouillard's trap into awls to exchange for bread.

The tireless hunters scoured the country. Farther and farther had scattered the game. Even the bears had departed. Thirty-three people ate a deer and an elk, or four deer a day. There was no commissariat for this little army but its own rifles. And yet, supplies must be laid in for crossing the mountains.

Every day Captain Lewis looked at the rising river and the melting snows of the Idaho Alps.

"That icy barrier, which separates me from my friends and my country, from all which makes life estimable--patience--patience--"

"The snow is yet deep on the mountains. You will not be able to pass them until the next full moon, or about the first of June," said the Indians.

"Unwelcome intelligence to men confined to a diet of horse meat and roots!" exclaimed Captain Lewis.

Finally even horse-flesh failed. Suspecting the situation, Chief Red Wolf came and said, "The horses on these hills are ours. Take what you need."

He wore a tippet of human scalps, but, says Lewis, "we have, indeed, on more than one occasion, had to admire the generosity of this Indian, whose conduct presents a model of what is due to strangers in distress."

Gradually the snows melted, and the high water subsided.

"The doves are cooing. The salmon will come," said the Indians. Blue flowers of the blooming camas covered the prairies like a lake of silver. With sixty-five horses and all the dried horse meat they could carry, on June 16, 1806, Lewis and Clark started back over the Bitter Root Range on the Lolo trail by which they had entered.

XXIV

_OVER THE BITTER ROOT RANGE_

Dog-tooth violets, roses, and strawberry blossoms covered the plain of Weippe without end, but the Lolo trail was deep with snow. Deep and deeper grew the drifts, twelve and fifteen feet. The air was keen and cold with winter rigours. To go on in those grassless valleys meant certain death to all their horses, and so, for the first time, they fell back to wait yet other days for the snows to melt upon the mountains.

"We must have experienced guides." Drouillard and Shannon were dispatched once more to the old camp, and lo! the salmon had come, in schools and shoals, reddening the Kooskooskee with their flickering fins.

Again they faced the snowy barrier with guides who traversed the trackless region with instinctive sureness.

"They never hesitate," said Lewis. "They are never embarrassed. So undeviating is their step that whenever the snow has disappeared, even for a hundred paces, we find the summer road."

Up in the Bitter Root peaks, like the chamois of the Alps, the Oregon mazama, the mountain goat, frolicked amid inaccessible rocks. And there, in the snows of the mountain pass, most significant of all, were found the tracks of barefooted Indians, supposed to have been Flatheads, fleeing in distress from pursuing Blackfeet. Such was the battle of primitive man.

The Indians regarded the journey of the white men into the country of their hereditary foes as a venture to certain death.

"Danger!" whispered the guides, significantly rapping on their heads, drawing their knives across their throats, and pointing far ahead.

Every year the Nez Percés followed the Lolo trail, stony and steep and ridgy with rocks and crossed with fallen trees, into the Buffalo Illahee, the buffalo country of the Missouri. And for this the Blackfeet fought them.

The Blackfeet, too, had been from time immemorial the deadly foe of the Flatheads, their bone of contention for ever the buffalo. The Blackfeet claimed as their own all the country lying east of the main range, and looked upon the Flatheads who went there to hunt as intruders.

The Flathead country was west and at the base of the main Rockies, along the Missoula and Clark's Fork and northward to the Fraser. With their sole weapon, the arrow, and their own undaunted audacity, twice a year occurred the buffalo chase, once in Summer and once in Winter. But "the ungodly Blackfeet," scourge of the mountains, lay in wait to trap and destroy the Flatheads as they would a herd of buffalo.

And so it had been war, bitter war, for ages. But a new force had given to the Blackfeet at the west and the Sioux at the east supremacy over the rest of the tribes,--that was the white man's gun from the British forts on the Saskatchewan.

For spoils and scalps the Blackfeet, Arabs of the North, raided from the Saskatchewan to Mexico. They besieged Fort Edmonton at the north, and left their tomahawk mark on the Digger Indian's grave at the south. The Shoshone-Snakes, too, were immemorial and implacable enemies of both the Blackfeet and the Columbia tribes. They fought to the Dalles and Walla Walla and up through the Nez Percés to Spokane. Their mad raiders threw up the dust of the Utah desert, and chased the lone Aztec to his last refuge in Arizona cliffs.