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Updated: June 6, 2025
This morning we had some difficulty in collecting our horses notwithstanding we had bubbled and picquited those we obtained of these people. we purchased two other horses this morning and several dogs. we exchanged one of our most indifferent horses for a very good one with the Chopunnish man who has his family with him. this man has a daughter new arrived at the age of puberty, who being in a certain situation is not permitted to ascociate with the family but sleeps at a distance from her father's camp and when traveling follows at some distance behind. in this state I am informed that the female is not permitted to eat, nor to touch any article of a culinary nature or manly occupation. at 10 A.M. we had collected all our horses except the white horse which Yellept had given Capt.
C. is their favorite phisician and has already received many applications. in our present situation I think it pardonable to continue this deseption for they will not give us any provision without compensation in merchandize and our stock is now reduced to a mere handfull. we take care to give them no article which can possibly oinjure them. we foud our Chopunnish guide at this lodge with his family. the indians brought us Capt.
In the winter they wear a short skirt of dressed skins, long painted leggings and moccasins, and a plait of twisted grass round the neck. "The Chopunnish have very few amusements, for their life is painful and laborious; all their exertions are necessary to earn even their precarious subsistence.
But in their wildest dreams, Captains Lewis and Clark could not have foreseen that in that identical region thrifty settlements of white men should flourish and that the time would come when the scanty remnant of the Chopunnish, whom we now call Nez Perces, would be gathered on a reservation near their camping-place. But both of these things have come to pass.
Maney of them were Shirts of the Same form of those of the Chopunnish & Shoshonees highly ornamented with the quils of the purcupine, as are also their mockersons & Legins. they Conseal the parts of generation with the Skins of the Fox or Some other Small animal drawn under neath a girdle and hanging loosely in front of them like a narrow apron.
The Comorant is a large black duck which feeds on fish; I proceive no difference between it & these found in the rivers of the Atlantic Coasts. we met with as high up the river as the enterance of the Chopunnish into the Kooskooske river. they increased in numbers as we decended, and formed much the Greatest portion of waterfowls which we saw on the Columbia untill we reached tidewater, where they also abound but do not bear a Similar proportion to the fowls found in this quarter. we found this bird fat and tolerably flavoured as we decended the Columbia.
The Chopunnish would think over the proposal that some of their young men should go over the range with the white men; a decision on this point should be reached before the white men left the country. Anyhow, the white men might be sure that the Indians would do their best to oblige their visitors. Their conclusion was, "For, although we are poor, our hearts are good."
This morning we came to a resolution to remain at our present encampment or some where in this neighbourhood untill we had obtained as much dryed meat as would be necessary for our voyage as far as the Chopunnish. to exchange our perogues for canoes with the natives on our way to the great falls of the columbia or purchase such canoes from them for Elkskins and Merchandize as would answer our purposes. these canoes we intend exchanging with the natives of the plains for horses as we proceed untill we obtain as many as will enable us to travel altogether by land. at some convenient point, perhaps at the entrence of the S. E. branch of the Columbia, we purpose sending a party of four or five men a head to collect our horses that they may be in readiness for us by our arrival at the Chopunnish; calculating by thus acquiring a large stock of horses we shall not only sucure the means of transporting our baggage over the mountains but that we will also have provided the means of subsisting; for we now view the horses as our only certain resource for food, nor do we look forward to it with any detestation or borrow, so soon is the mind which is occupyed with any interesting object reconciled to it's situation.
The Chopunnish bury their dead in different ways as I have obseved, besides that already discribed they scaffold Some and deposit others in Sepulchers, those are rearly to be Seen in this upper part of the Columbian Waters. the one already discribed is the most Common. they all Sacrifice horses, Canoes and every Species of property to the dead. the bones of maney horses are Seen lyeing about those repositaries of the dead &c..
The Squar wife to Shabono busied her Self gathering the roots of the fenel Called by the Snake Indians Year-pah for the purpose of drying to eate on the Rocky mountains. those roots are very paliatiable either fresh rosted boiled or dried and are generally between the Size of a quill and that of a mans fingar and about the length of the latter. at 2 P.M. 3 Indians who had been out hunting towards the place we met with the Chopunnish last fall, which place they Call the quarmash grounds. those men had been out Several days and killed nothing. we gave them a Small piece of meat which they told us they would reserve for their Small Children who was very hungary. we Smoked with them and they departed.
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