Page:Cathlamet On the Columbia.djvu/63

 It was a long procession and it had passed and repassed that way for hundreds of years, and now only the trail was left, but the trail told many things to any one who could see.

To understand the Indian migration you must know what they are traveling for, because the Indian life was spent in traveling. In this case apparently these Indians had not traveled this road for war or sight-seeing or pleasure. It had only been the old quest of food.

Immediately below the sightseer from this point lies Sauvie's Island, stretching for fifteen or twenty miles down the Columbia River, and this island, famous in the history of the Hudson Bay Company and of the pioneers, was a garden of the wapato, the Indian potato. The lakes and overflowed lands were green with its many arrow-shaped leaves, and here every Autumn the