The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark
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 FortClatsop.
Back past Cathlamet they came, where Queen Sally still watched by hertotem posts; past Oak Point on Fanny's Island, named by Clark, wheretwo Springs later a Boston ship made the first white settlement inOregon. Slowly the little flotilla paddled up, past Coffin Rock,immemorial deposit of Indian dead, past snowy St. Helens, a landmarkat sea for the ship that would enter the harbour.
Flowers were everywhere, the hillsides aglow with red floweringcurrants that made March as gay as the roses of June. The grass washigh, and the robins were singing.
At sunset, March 30, they camped on a beautiful prairie, the futuresite of historic Vancouver. Before them the Columbia was a shimmer ofsilver. Behind, rose the dim, dark Oregon forest. The sharp cry of thesea-gull rang over the waters, and the dusky pelican and the splendidbrown albatross were sailing back to the sea.
Herds of elk and deer roamed on the uplands and in woody green islandsbelow, where flocks of ducks, geese, and swans were digging up thelily-like wapato with their bills.
With laboured breath, still bending to the oar, on the first of Aprilthey encountered a throng of Indians crowding down from above, gaunt,hollow-eyed, almost starved, greedily tarrying to pick up the bonesand 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 allgone. No deer. No elk. No antelope to the Nez Perce country."Hundreds were coming down for food at Wapato. "_Elip salmon chaco._"
"Until the salmon come!" That had been the cry of the Clatsops. TheChinooks were practising incantations to bring the longed-for salmon.The Cathlamets were spreading their nets. The Wahkiakums kept theirboats afloat. Even the Multnomahs were wistfully waiting. And now herecame plunging down all the upper country for wapato,--"Until thesalmon come."
"And pray, when will that be?"
"Not until the next full moon,"--at least the second of May, and inMay the Americans had hoped to cross the mountains. All the campdeliberated,--and still the Cascade Indians came flocking down intothe lower valley.
"We must remain here until we can collect meat enough to last us tothe Nez Perce nation," said the Captains, and so, running the gauntletof starvation, it happened that Lewis and Clark camped for ten daysnear the base of Mt. Hood at the river Sandy. In order to collect asmuch meat as possible a dozen hunters were sent out; the rest wereemployed 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 theChinook jargon caught at Clatsop.
"At the Falls of a great river that flows into the Columbia from thesouth."
"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 inhis war canoe had said, "Village there!" on their downward journey tothe sea. Clark gave one of the men a burning glass to conduct him tothe spot, and set out with seven men in a canoe.
Along the south side of the Columbia, back they paddled to themysterious inlet hidden behind that emerald curtain. And along withthem paddled canoe-loads of men, women, and children in search offood.
Clark now perceived that what they had called "Imagecanoe Island"consisted of three islands, the one in the middle concealing theopening between the other two.
Here great numbers of canoes were drawn up. Lifting their long, slimboats to their backs, the Indian women crossed inland to the sloughsand ponds, where, frightening up the ducks, they plunged to the breastinto the icy cold water. There they stood for hours, loosening wapatowith their feet. The bulbs, rising to the surface, were picked up andtossed 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 hiscould buy the precious wapato.
Deliberately then the captain took out one of Dr. Saugrain'sphosphorus matches and tossed it in the fire. Instantly it spit andflamed.
"_Me-sah-chie! Me-sah-chie!_"--the Indians shrieked, and piled thecherished wapato at his feet. The screaming children fled behind thebeds and hid behind the men. An old man began to speak with greatvehemence, imploring his god for protection.
The match burned out and quiet was restored. Clark paid for thewapato, smoked, and went on, behind the islands.
As if lifting a veil the boat swept around the willows and the Indianwaved his hand.
"Multnomah!"
Before them, vast and deep, a river rolled its smooth volumeinto the Columbia. At the same moment five snow peaks burst intoview,--Rainier, Hood, St. Helens, Adams, and to the southeast anothersnowy 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 peaksforced the involuntary exclamation, "The only spot west of the RockyMountains suitable for a settlement!" The very air of domesticoccupation gleamed on the meadows flecked with deer and waterfall.Amid the scattered groves of oak and dogwood, bursting now intomagnolian bloom, Clark half expected to see some stately mansion rise,as in the park of some old English nobleman. The ever-prevailingflowering currant lit the landscape with a hue of roses.
A dozen miles or more Clark pressed on, up the great inland river, andslept one night near the site of the present Portland. He examined thesoil, looked at the timber, and measured a fallen fir three hundredand eighteen feet as it lay.
Watching the current rolling its uniform flow from some unknowndistant source, the Captain began taking soundings.
"This river appears to possess water enough for the largest ship. Noris it rash to believe that it may water the country as far asCalifornia." For at least two-thirds of the width he could find nobottom with his five-fathom line.
Along that wide deep estuary, the grainships of the world to-day rideup to the wharves of Portland. The same snow peaks are there, the sameemerald hills, and the bounteous smile of Nature blushing in athousand orchards.
All along the shores were deserted solitary houses of broad boardsroofed 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, thebunk-line tiers of beds were empty. All had just gone or were going tothe fisheries.
"And where?"
"To Clackamas nation. _Hyas tyee Tumwater._ Great Falls. Salmon."
Had Clark but passed a few miles further up, he would have foundhundreds of Indians at the fishing rendezvous, Clackamas Rapids andWillamette Falls.
"How many of the Clackamas nation?"
"Eleven villages, to the snow peak."
"And beyond?"
"Forty villages, the Callapooias." With outstretched hand the Indianclosed his eyes and shook his head,--evidently he had never been sofar to the south.
Back around Warrior's Point Clark came, whence the Multnomahs werewont to issue to battle in their huge war canoes. An old Indian trailled up into the interior, where for ages the lordly Multnomahs hadheld their councils. Many houses had fallen entirely to ruin.
Clark inquired the cause of decay. An aged Indian pointed to a womandeeply pitted with the smallpox.
"All died of that. _Ahn-cutty!_ Long time ago!"
The Multnomahs lived on Wapato Island. A dozen nations gave fealty toMultnomah. All had symbolic totems, carved and painted on door andbedstead, and at every bedhead hung a war club and a Moorish scimitarof iron, thin and sharp, rude relic of Ko-na-pe's workshop.
Having now dried sufficient meat to last to the Nez Perces, Lewis andClark set out for the Dalles, that tragical valley, racked andbatte
red, where the devils held their tourneys when the world wasshaped by flood and flame.
Through the sheeny brown basaltic rock, three rifts let through theriver, where, in fishing time, salmon leaped in prodigious numbers,filling the Indians' baskets, tons and tons a day. But the salmon hadnot yet come.
At this season the upper tribes came down to the Dalles to trafficrobes and silk grass for sea-shells and wapato. Fish was money. Afterthe traders came, beads, beads, became the Indian's one ambition. Forbeads he would sacrifice his only garment and his last morsel of food.
In this annual traffic of east and west, the Dalles Indians had becometraders, robbers, pirates. No canoe passed that way without toll.Dressed in deerskin, elk, bighorn, wolf, and buffalo, these savageslay now in wait for Lewis and Clark, portaging up the long narrows.
Tugging, sweating, paddling, poling, pulling by cords, it wasdifficult 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 shotinstantly."
The crowds fell back. Every man toiled on with gun in hand. But fromvillage to village, dishes, blankets, and whatever the Indians couldget their hands on, disappeared. Soon there would be no baggage.
It seemed impossible to detect a thief. "Nothing but numbers protectsus," said the white men.
Worse even than the pirates of the Sioux, it came almost to pitchedbattle. Again and again Lewis harangued the chiefs for the restorationof stolen property. Once he struck an Indian. Finally he set out toburn a village, but the missing property came to light, hidden in anIndian 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 expeditionwas bankrupt.
With what gratitude, then, they met Yellept, chief of the WallaWallas, 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 WallaWalla river. Immediately he called in not only his own but theneighbouring nations, urging them to hospitality. Then Chief Yellept,the most notable man in all that country, himself brought an armful ofwood for their fires and a platter of roasted mullets.
At once all the Walla Wallas followed with armloads of fuel; thecampfires blazed and crackled. Footsore, weary, half-starved, Lewisand Clark and their men supped and then slept.
Fortunately there was among the Walla Wallas a captive Shoshone boywho spoke the tongue of Sacajawea. In council the Captains explainedthemselves and the object of their journey.
"Opposite our village a shorter route leads to the Kooskooskee," saidYellept. "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 theEyakimas, 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 aroundthe camp. The number of unfortunates, products of Indian battle,neglect, and exposure, was prodigious.
Opening the medicine chest, while Lewis bought horses, Clark turnedphysician, distributing eye-water, splinting broken bones, dealing outpills and sulphur. One Indian with a contracted knee came limping in.
"My own father, Walla Walla chief," says old Se-cho-wa, an aged Indianwoman 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 leavingthe United States the Walla Wallas were the most hospitable andsincere."
Poor old Yellept! One hundred years later his medal was found in thesand at the mouth of the Walla Walla. All his sons were slain inbattle or died of disease. When the last one lay stretched in thegrave, the old chief stepped in upon the corpse and commanded hispeople to bury them in one grave together.
"On account of his great sorrow," says old Se-cho-wa.
And so he was buried.