First Across the Continent: The Story of the Exploring Expedition of Lewis and Clark in 1804-5-6Brooks, Noah
History
First Across the Continent: The Story of the Exploring Expedition of Lewis and Clark in 1804-5-6
Brooks, Noah
Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806); United States -- Discovery and exploration; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
“On our first arrival they seemed surprised, but not alarmed, and we
soon became intimate by means of smoking and our favorite entertainment
for the Indians, the violin. They gave us fruit, roots, and root-bread,
and we purchased from them three dogs. The houses of these people are
similar to those of the Indians above, and their language is the same;
their dress also, consisting of robes or skins of wolves, deer, elk,
and wildcat, is made nearly after the same model; their hair is worn in
plaits down each shoulder, and round their neck is put a strip of some
skin with the tail of the animal hanging down over the breast; like the
Indians above, they are fond of otter-skins, and give a great price for
them. We here saw the skin of a mountain sheep, which they say lives
among the rocks in the mountains; the skin was covered with white hair;
the wool was long, thick, and coarse, with long coarse hair on the top
of the neck and on the back, resembling somewhat the bristles of a goat.
Immediately behind the village is a pond, in which were great numbers of
small swan.”
The “mountain sheep” mentioned here are not the bighorn of which we have
heard something in the earlier part of this narrative, but a species
of wild goat found among the Cascade Mountains. The “wildcat” above
referred to is probably that variety of lynx known in Canada and most
of the Northern States and the Pacific as the _loup-cervier_, or
vulgarly, the “lucifee.”
On the last day of October, the next of the more difficult rapids being
near, Captain Clark went ahead to examine the “shoot,” as the explorers
called the place which we know as the chute. In the thick wood that
bordered the river he found an ancient burial-place which he thus
describes:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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