Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/129

Rh short, stout-built man, with a good face of the Indian type, very dark—almost African—in complexion, and dressed in a rusty suit of white men's clothes, with the inevitable high silk-hat. His manner, on being introduced, is a very good copy of the civilized man's; but his English is quite too imperfect for much conversation. We told him we had come a long way to see the man who had talked with Lewis and Clarke—at which he smiled in a gratified manner—when we asked him how old he was when Lewis and Clarke were in the country. He indicated with his hand the stature of a five-year-old child; but he must have been older than that, to have remembered all he claims to about the great explorers. It was his father, who, while they explored the Columbia to its mouth, kept their horses through the winter, and returned them in good condition in the spring.

On asking him the meaning of koos-koos-kie—the name Lewis and Clarke gave to the Clearwater—he explained, in Nez Perce, to Mr. Whitman, that Lewis and Clarke misapprehended the words of the Indians; that, on being questioned concerning this river, and knowing that it was the object of the explorers to find the great River of the West—as it was then called—they had answered them that the Clearwater was koos-koos-kie: that is, a smaller river, or branch only of the greater one beyond. But Lewis and Clarke understood them to give it as the name of the stream. "What was the name of this river, formerly?" we asked. He could not tell us. If it ever had a name it was forgotten; and thus, directly, the interview ended. It is remarkable, that so many of the rivers of the country are nameless among the Indians; and especially so, that the Columbia seems never to have had a name