Blazing the Way; Or, True Stories, Songs and Sketches of Puget SoundDenny, Emily Inez
History
Blazing the Way; Or, True Stories, Songs and Sketches of Puget Sound
Denny, Emily Inez
Indians of North America -- Northwestern States; Oregon Territory -- History; Washington (State) -- History
"We then came down in the Grande Ronde valley, and it seemed as
if we had reached a paradise. It was a beautiful valley. Here
Indians came to trade us dried salmon, la camas cakes and dried
crickette cakes. We traded for some salmon and the la camas
cakes, but the crickette cakes we did not hanker after.
"A man in one train thought he would fool an Indian chief, so he
told the Indian he would swap his girl sixteen years old, for a
couple of horses. The bargain was made and he took the horses,
and the Indian hung around until near night. When the captain of
the company found out that the Indian was waiting for his girl to
go with him, the captain told the man that we might all be killed
through him, and made him give up the horses to the chief. The
Indian chief was real mad as he took the horses away.
"We went on down to The Dalles, where we stopped a few days.
There was a mission at The Dalles where two missionaries lived,
Brewer and Waller. We emigrants traded some of our poor, tired
cattle off to them for some of their fat beef, and some coarse
flour chopped on a hand mill, like what we call chop-feed
nowadays.
"Then we had to make a portage around the falls, and the women
and children walked. I don't remember the distance, but we walked
until late at night, and waded in the mud knee-deep, and my
mother stumped her toe and fell against a log or she might have
gone down into the river. We little tots fell down in the mud
until you'd have thought we were pigs.
"The men drove around the falls another way, and got out of
provisions.
"My father, seeing a boat from the high bluffs, going down to the
river hailed it, and when he came down to the boat he found us.
He said he had gotten so hungry that he killed a crow and ate it,
and thought it tasted splendid. He took provisions to the cattle
drivers and we came on down the river to Fort Vancouver. It
rained on us for a week and our bedclothes were drenched through
and through, so at night we would open our bed of wet clothes and
cuddle in them as though we were in a palace car, and all kept
well and were not sick a day in all of our six months' journey
crossing the plains. My mother gained and grew fleshy and strong.
"Next we arrived in what is now the city of Portland, which then
consisted of a log cabin and a few shanties. We stayed there a
few days to dry our bedding.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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