The Bird-Woman of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Part 9

CROSSING THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

The trip across the mountains was very hard.

The mountain tops were steep.

There was no road.

The ground was made of sharp rocks.

The horses slipped and fell down.

The men's feet were cut and black and blue.

It rained many days and snowed nights.

They had no houses.

Before they could start on each day, they had to melt the snow off their goods.

The men grew stiff from the wet and the cold.

The only way they could get warm was to keep on walking.

They had little food.

They had only a little corn when they started across the mountains.

This was soon gone.

There were no animals, no fish, and no roots on the way.

They had to kill their horses.

They had only horsemeat to eat.

The soldiers grew sick.

Some could hardly stand.

But they did not want to turn back.

They knew the Indians could find the way down to the Columbia River.

Then they could get to the Pacific Ocean without the Indians.

So they went on.

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AT THE COLUMBIA RIVER.

At last they got across the mountains and down on the Columbia River.

The Indians who had showed them the way went home again.

There were other Indians near the Columbia.

These Indians gave the men salmon and roots.

They ate so much that they were ill.

The captains and all the soldiers were ill.

But they started to make canoes to ride down the Columbia.

They did not get well.

So they bought some dogs.

They cooked the dogs and ate them.

For days they could eat only dog.

The Indians laughed at them for eating dog.

They said, "Dogs are good to watch the camp.

They are not good to eat.

We do not eat them.

What poor men these must be to eat dog!"

Suddenly the captains fired off their guns and a soldier played the fiddle.

Then the Indians stopped laughing.

They had never heard a gun before.

They had never before heard a fiddle.

They thought the white men must be wonderful people to have guns and fiddles.

They wished to be friends with such wonderful people.

So they did not make fun of them any more.

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HOW THE INDIANS DRIED SALMON.

The soldiers left their horses here on the Columbia River.

They asked the Indians to keep them until they should come back from the West.

Then they started down the river in canoes.

On the Columbia, the party saw some Indians drying salmon.

They opened the fish.

Then they put it in the sun.

When it was well dried, they pounded it to powder between two stones.

Then they put it into a basket.

The basket was made of gra.s.s.

It had dried salmon skin inside.

The Indians pounded the powdered salmon down hard into the basket.

When a basket was full, they put dried salmon skin on the top.

Then the basket was put where it would keep dry.

The salmon powder would keep for years.

Only one tribe of Indians knew how to make it well.

The other tribes bought it from them.

All the tribes liked it.

The white men, too, liked it.

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THE WAPPATO.

The party found a root new to them on the lower Columbia.

The Indians called it wappato.

Captain Clark called it arrowhead.

The wappato grew all the year.

The Indian women gathered it.

A woman carried a light canoe to a pond.