Page:Recollections of My Boyhood.djvu/65



The absorbing thought of this winter was keeping up the food supply. The men were out at work in all kinds of weather, not for money, but for food. Father built a ferry boat for A. Beers or James O'Neil. He first caulked the openings between the planks in the bottom of the boat, and then poured in hot pitch. As it was a large boat he used a bushel or two of literature he found in the old house. Tracts and other pamphlets that had been left there by the missionaries were forced into the cracks with a chisel and hammer.

For building the boat father took his pay in provisions; pork and peas constituted the greater part of these provisions. The French settlers seem to have grown peas extensively. I remember wading around in a large bin of peas for an hour or more while we were in camp at Champoeg. These peas were white and very hard. The Indians were very partial to peas, or lepwah, as they called them. They used them for making soup which was called liplip.

I believe there were no dry goods or clothing stores nearer than Fort Vancouver. There was no place where shoes could be gotten. The older people wore buckskin moccasins purchased from the Indians, while the young people went barefooted. Fortunately this proved to he a warm winter, but wet, as a Willamette winter usually is.

I had already learned a number of Indian proper names. We saw Indians on the Columbia River who said they were Spokane. Others said they were Waskopum, Walla Wallas, Kince-Chinook, Klackamas, Klickitat and Chemomachot. After we had settled in the valley we had visitors from the tribes living on the Columbia. When asked where they came from, or where they lived, the answer would he "Katchutehut." I could speak those names just as they were spoken by the Indians, but it is difficult to tell the reader how they should