Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/173

122 and other vegetables, the first instance of native agriculture Parker had seen west of the Rocky Mountains, although the Hudson's Bay Company would at any time have encouraged the Indians in planting in the neighborhood of their forts had they cared to cultivate the soil. The Indians about Puget Sound, more than any others, seem to have taken to the cultivation of the potato for food,. [sic]

Encamping for the night, sixty miles from Colville, he found many Spokanes and Nez Percés gathered, who had heard from others that a teacher of religion was passing through the country, and they were anxious to see and listen to so great a personage. They brought with them, with wise forethought, an interpreter of their own, a young Spokane who had attended school at the Red River settlement, and who understood English fairly. There was present also a Nez Percé chief who knew the Spokane tongue. For their edification religious services were held in the evening, and as the interpreter rendered the sermon into Spokane, the Nez Percé translated it into his language, which was done without disturbance, and was entirely the idea of the Indians themselves. So wonderfully interesting did the preacher find these people, that he regarded it as a special providence that he had suffered several detentions which prevented his passing them; and as he rode next day through a very fertile but narrow valley extending north and south for fifty miles, he settled in his mind that here too should be a mission from which the tribes of the Spokanes, Cœurs d'Alêne, Pends d'Oreille, and Shuyelpi, or Kettle Falls, could all be reached.

Reaching Fort Colville after a hard ride, on the evening of the 28th, in an almost starving condition having exhausted his supplies, he found himself just too late to see McDonald, the gentleman in charge who had a few days before gone with the annual brigade to Fort Vancouver. Every attention was