Page:Wishram by Henry J. Biddle.djvu/7

Rh shown opposite page 117, and the depressions on its surface, where former houses stood, are plainly evident. The figure of a man on the mound is directly in the center of one of these "house-pits." The structure in the front of the mound is some kind of a cellar, made by present day Indians. The present Indian village of Spedis is directly southwest of this mound; the village of the Echelutes must have been directly northeast of it.

On their return journey in 1806 the explorers endeavored to buy horses at this village. Lewis (April 16) speaks of it as the "Skillute village above the long narrows.....," and Clark says, this village is moved about 300 yards below the spot it stood last fall at the time we passed down, they were all above ground ......." This would put the Echelute village of 1806 exactly on the site of the present day Spedis.

It is greatly to be regretted that many of those who followed Lewis and Clark did not have the ability as map makers, or the accuracy in description, of those two great men. But the next white man to pass down that stretch of the river was an able cartographer, David Thompson. Unfortunately his notes, which have been published by Mr. Elliott, are mostly made up of courses and distances, with but little descriptive matter. To understand them it is almost necessary to plat them out, and to compare the map thus obtained with a map of the present day. This the writer has done and the result shows that his camp of July 11, 1811, was two miles below where the river turns southwesterly, and where he began his portage. This puts it without question at the head of the Long Narrows. He says, "....camped with about 300 families....saw nothing of the bad Indians." No mention of the name of the tribe, or even of which bank of the river he camped on. But there are various rea-