Page:The Columbia river , or, Scenes and adventures during a residence of six years on the western side of the Rocky Mountains among various tribes of Indians hitherto unknown (Volume 1).djvu/324

 material. Their mode of cooking is however more expeditious than ours. Having put a certain quantity of water into the kettle, they throw in several hot stones, which quickly cause the water to boil; the fish or meat is then put in, and the steam is kept from evaporating by a small mat thrown over the kettle. By this system a large salmon will be boiled in less than twenty minutes, and meat in a proportionably short space of time. They are not scrupulously clean in their cooking. A kettle in which salmon is boiled in the morning may have elk dressed in it the same evening, and the following day be doomed to cook a dish of sturgeon, without being washed out, or scarcely rinsed. They occasionally roast both their meat and fish on small wooden brochettes, similar to those used by the upper Indians.

It will no doubt be regarded as a subject of surprise, that in felling the timber for their houses, and in the laborious operation of forming their canoes, they had not, previous to our arrival, an axe. Their only instruments consisted of a chisel generally formed out of an old file, a kind of oblong stone, which they used as a hammer, and a mallet made of spruce knot, well oiled and hardened by the action of fire. With these