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.