Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/14



6 O. B. SPERLIN

son attended me, opened my clams, roasted my fish and did various other kinds of offices in which he was pleased to en- gage. After this entertainment we were greeted with two songs, in which was frequently repeated the words, 'Wakush Tiyee a winna' or 'Welcome, traveling chief." Incidentally, while Hoskins and his fellow officer were thus entertained, his men, freed from the restraint of officers, managed to kick up a row, and the visitors from the Columbia fled into the teeth of a storm.

Indeed, when face to face with the "traveling chief," what wonder fills the native heart! "A very respectable old man sat down by me," writes Thompson, 13 "thankful to see us and smoke of our tobacco before he died, he often felt my shoes and legs gently as if to know whether I was like themselves." The Carriers received Mackenzie 14 with a mixture of astonish- ment and admiration. "Do not you white men know every- thing in the world ?" queried an Atnah chief when asked about the geography of the Tacooche Tesse. The Tacullies offered to pay Harmon 15 if he would bring fair weather when they were starting out on a journey. They thought that all who could read and write were supernatural beings. The Indians above the Falls of the Columbia thought Lewis and Clark came from the sky "rained down out of the clouds," White- house 16 puts it. The natives of Whidbey Island 17 showed in- expressible astonishment when they saw the white under Whid- bey's clothes. At Point Gray they examined Vancouver with the greatest curiosity. Indians on the Parsnip who had never seen white men waited for nine years in the neighborhood of one spot after Finley had turned back from that point in 1797 ; their curiosity was gratified when Fraser 18 came in 1806. The old Hacamaugh chief at the mouth of the Thompson River "often stretched out both hands through curiosity, in order to feel us," as Fraser 19 records. In some cases, notably those

13 Oregon Hist. Quart.: Vol. XV., p. 54.

14 Voyages: Vol. II., p. 167.

15 Journal: p. 301.

1 6 Original Journals: Vol. VII., p. 183.

17 Vancouver, Voyage: Vol. II., p. 162.

1 8 First Journal.

19 Journal: p. 182.