The Indians all the time could not believe that the whites were in earnest, till they beheld the lifeless body. The deed was, however, no sooner committed than Mr. Clarke grew alarmed. The chief, throwing down his robe on the ground, a sign of displeasure, harangued his people, who immediately after mounted their fleetest horses, and scampered off in all directions to circulate the news and assemble the surrounding {217} tribes, to take vengeance on the whites. In the mean time, leaving the enraged Indians to follow their inclination, the canoes were thrown into the water, loaded, and down the current Mr. Clarke and his men pushed their way day and night till they reached the Walla Walla, where they arrived safe on the 4th of June; and here we shall leave them for the present, while we detail M‘Kenzie’s winter adventures. Fortunately for the whites, the defunct Indian was a person of very low degree, even in the estimation of the Indians themselves, being an outcast without friends or relatives, which made them less bent on revenge, but not the less disposed to annoy, as we shall have occasion to notice hereafter. Mr. M‘Kenzie and party before mentioned accompanied Mr. Clarke up the South-branch as far as the Pavilion: here Clarke and his party forked off for Spokane in August, leaving M‘Kenzie to prosecute his voyage up the same river till he reached the very centre of the Great Shahaptain, or Nez Percé nation, where he established himself for the winter.[77] By way of clearing up some points not very intelligible to many, we may here mention that the Great Snake River, Louis River, South-branch, Shahaptain River, and Nez Percé River, are all one and the same stream, with different denominations. As soon as M‘Kenzie had got his goods safe under cover, he sent off Mr. Reed, at the head of a small party, to bring the _caches_ of goods left by Mr. Hunt to his own post. On his way, he picked up seven of {218} the Canadians belonging to the trapping parties fitted out by Mr. Hunt on his land expedition: these were, Dubreuil, Carson, the gunsmith, Delaunay, St. Michel, Turcotte, Landrie, and La Chapelle, the blacksmith. Some of these fellows, despairing of ever reaching the Columbia, and no doubt thinking the _caches_ would be lost, went, accompanied by a band of the Snakes, and rifled several of them; and what they did not take was destroyed by the rains, the wolves, and other animals: some, however, had not been touched, and these Mr. Reed and his party carried off with them to M‘Kenzie’s post, which place they reached at the end of thirty-five days.