Part 5

Sacajawea went to Captain Lewis. She told him what she had heard. He called the chiefs together. They smoked a pipe together. Sacajawea slipped a piece of sugar into Cameahwait's hand. As he sucked it, she said, "You will get this good thing from the white men if you are friends with them."

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Then Captain Lewis said, "Are you men of your word?"

The Indians said, "Yes."

He said, "Did you not promise to carry our goods over the mountains?"

The Indians said, "Yes."

"Then," he said, "why are you going to leave us now? If you had not promised, we would have gone back down the Missouri. Then no other white man would come to your land. You wish the whites to be your friends. You want them to give you goods. You should keep you promise to them. I will keep my promise to you. You seem afraid to keep your promise."

The chiefs said, "We are not afraid. We will keep our promise."

They sent out word to all their men to keep their promise. Captain Lewis thanked Sacajawea. If she had not told him, the Indians would have gone off in the night. The whites would have been left in the steep Rocky Mountains with no horses and no way of getting food.

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CROSSING THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

The trip across the mountains was very hard. The mountain tops were steep. There was no road. The ground was made of sharp rocks. The horses slipped and fell down. The men's feet were cut and black and blue. It rained many days and snowed nights. They had no houses. Before they could start on each day, they had to melt the snow off their goods. The men grew stiff from the wet and the cold. The only way they could get warm was to keep on walking. They had little food. They had only a little corn when they started across the mountains. This was soon gone. There were no animals, no fish, and no roots on the way. They had to kill their horses. They had only horsemeat to eat. The soldiers grew sick. Some could hardly stand. But they did not want to turn back. They knew the Indians could find the way down to the Columbia River. Then they could get to the Pacific Ocean without the Indians. So they went on.

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AT THE COLUMBIA RIVER.

At last they got across the mountains and down on the Columbia River. The Indians who had showed them the way went home again. There were other Indians near the Columbia. These Indians gave the men salmon and roots. They ate so much that they were ill. The captains and all the soldiers were ill. But they started to make canoes to ride down the Columbia. They did not get well. So they bought some dogs. They cooked the dogs and ate them. For days they could eat only dog. The Indians laughed at them for eating dog. They said, "Dogs are good to watch the camp. They are not good to eat. We do not eat them. What poor men these must be to eat dog!" Suddenly the captains fired off their guns and a soldier played the fiddle. Then the Indians stopped laughing. They had never heard a gun before. They had never before heard a fiddle. They thought the white men must be wonderful people to have guns and fiddles. They wished to be friends with such wonderful people. So they did not make fun of them any more.

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HOW THE INDIANS DRIED SALMON.

The soldiers left their horses here on the Columbia River. They asked the Indians to keep them until they should come back from the West. Then they started down the river in canoes. On the Columbia, the party saw some Indians drying salmon. They opened the fish. Then they put it in the sun. When it was well dried, they pounded it to powder between two stones. Then they put it into a basket. The basket was made of grass. It had dried salmon skin inside. The Indians pounded the powdered salmon down hard into the basket. When a basket was full, they put dried salmon skin on the top. Then the basket was put where it would keep dry. The salmon powder would keep for years. Only one tribe of Indians knew how to make it well. The other tribes bought it from them. All the tribes liked it. The white men, too, liked it.

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THE WAPPATO.

The party found a root new to them on the lower Columbia. The Indians called it wappato. Captain Clark called it arrowhead. The wappato grew all the year. The Indian women gathered it. A woman carried a light canoe to a pond. She waded into the pond. She put the canoe on the water. With her toes she pulled up the wappato from the bottom of the pond. The woman caught it and put it in the canoe. She was in the water many hours, summer and winter. When her canoe was full, she put it on her head and carried it home. She roasted the wappato on hot stones. It tasted very good. The soldiers said it was the best root they had tasted. The Indian women used to put some wappato in grass baskets and sell it to the tribes up the river.

anx ious cheer ful view break ing dis tinct ly shores

TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN.

The party went down the Columbia River in canoes. It was a hard trip. It rained all the time. Each day the men were wet to the skin. They had to carry their goods around some rapids. They could not be very cheerful. One day it stopped raining for a little time. The low clouds went away. The party saw that the river was very wide. They rowed on. Then they saw the great ocean lying in the sun. They became very happy. They cheered and laughed and sang. They rowed on very fast. Captain Lewis wrote in his book: "Ocean in view! O! the joy! We are in VIEW of the Ocean, this great Pacific Ocean, which we have been so long anxious to see. The noise made by the waves breaking on the rocky shores may be heard distinctly."

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THE PACIFIC OCEAN.

The party saw that they had come to the end of their journey. They had come 4,134 miles from the mouth of the Missouri River. It had taken them a year and a half to come. But now they forgot their troubles. They forgot the times they had been hungry. They forgot their cut feet and their black and blue backs. They forgot the bears and the snakes and the mosquitoes. They saw the Pacific Ocean before them. They sang because they were the first white men to make this journey. They did not care for the troubles going back. They knew that they could go home faster than they had come. And they sang together, "The Ocean! The Ocean! O joy! O joy!"

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