Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/111

Rh that they should meet them at that point in the following spring when they expected to be on their return trip. The scrupulous fidelity with which the Nez Percés carried out their trust is some evidence of the oft-made assertion that the treachery characteristic of the Indians was learned afterwards from the whites.

With five large and well-filled canoes, and with a good supply of eatables and all the other necessaries of life, the explorers now cast themselves upon the clear, swift current of the Kooskooskie, and on the 10th of October reached that striking and interesting place where the beautiful modern town of Lewiston is located, at the junction of the Clearwater and the Snake. The turbid, angry, sullen Snake, so striking a contrast with the lesser stream, received from the explorers the name of Kimooenim, its Indian name. Subsequently they christened it Lewis's Fork, but the still less attractive name of Snake is the one by which it is universally known.

The journey of a hundred and twenty miles from the junction of the Clearwater and the Snake to the junction of the latter stream with the mighty Columbia, seems to have been a calm and uneventful journey, though the explorers record every manner of event, whether important or unimportant. Knowledge of their approach seems to have reached the Indian world, and when on October 16th they reached the point where the modern city of Pasco is located, they were met by a regular procession of two hundred Indians. The two great rivers were then at their lowest point in the year, and they found by measurement that the Columbia was 960 yards in width and the Snake, 575