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He promised that, if we would stay the next day at his house, a few miles distant, he would collect such of the horses as were in the neighborhood, and send his young men for those in the forks, over the Kooskooskee. He moreover advised us to visit Broken Arm, who was a chief of great eminence, and he would himself guide us to his dwelling.
This was at the junction of the north fork of the river with the main stream; and all below that point is called the Lower Kooskooskee, while that above is known as the upper river. The latitude of the camp, according to the journal of the explorers, was 46'0 34' 56" north.
Here they buried in a cache their saddles, horse-gear, and a small supply of powder and musket balls for possible emergencies. The Kooskooskee, it should be borne in mind, is now better known as the Clearwater; it empties into the Snake River, and that into the Columbia.
The languages of these two nations, of each of which we obtained a vocabulary, differ but little from each other, or from that of the Chopunnish who inhabit the Kooskooskee and Lewis' rivers. In their dress and general appearance they also much resemble those nations; the men wearing a robe of deer- antelope-skin, under which a few of them have a short leathern shirt.
As we may suppose, the meeting was very cordial, and Weahkootnut turned back with his white friends and accompanied them to the mouth of the Kooskooskee, a stream of which our readers have heard before; it is now known as the Clearwater. Captain Lewis told Weahkootnut that his people were hungry, their slender stock of provisions being about exhausted.
On the 29th they descended from the snowy mountains to the main branch of the Kooskooskee, where they found the body of a deer that had been left for them by the hunters, who were working in advance, "a very seasonable addition to our food; for having neither meat nor oil, we were reduced to a diet of roots, without salt or any other addition."
Most of the women and children, though notified of the coming of the white man, were so scared by the appearance of the strangers that they fled to the woods. The men, however, received them without fear and gave them a plentiful supply of food. They were now on one of the upper branches of the Kooskooskee River, near what is the site of Pierce City, county seat of Shoshonee County, Idaho.
We soon collected our horses, and after a scanty breakfast of roots set out on a course S. 35'0 E." They were now following the general course of the Kooskooskee, or Clearwater, as the stream is called, and their route lay in what is now Nez Perce County, Idaho. They have passed the site of the present city of Lewiston, named for Captain Lewis.
Having camped, on the twenty-seventh of September, in the Kooskooskee River, at a place where plenty of good timber was found, preparations for building five canoes were begun. From this time to the fifth of October, all the men capable of labor were employed in preparing the canoes.
"We had lately heard, also, that some Indians, residing at a considerable distance, on the south side of the Kooskooskee, were in possession of two tomahawks, one of which had been left at our camp on Moscheto Creek, and the other had been stolen while we were with the Chopunnish in the autumn.
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