University of Virginia Library

Friday (Thursday) January 9th. 1806.

Our men are now very much engaged in dressing Elk and
Deer skins for mockersons and cloathing. the deer are extreemly
scarce in this neighbourhood, some are to be found
near the praries and open grounds along the coast. this evening
we heard seven guns in quick succession after each other,
they appeared to be on the Creek to the South of us and
several miles distant; I expect that the hunters Drewyer and
Collins have fallen in with a gang of Elk. some marrow bones
and a little fresh meat would be exceptable; I have been living
for two days past on poor dryed Elk, or jurk as the hunters
term it.

The Clatsops Chinnooks &c bury their dead in their canoes.
for this purpose four pieces of split timber are set erect on
end, and sunk a few feet in the grown[d], each brace having
their fiat sides opposite to each other and sufficiently far assunder
to admit the width of the canoes in which the dead are
to be deposited; through each of these perpendicular posts,
at the hight of six feet a mortice is cut, through which two
bars of wood are incerted; on these cross bars a small canoe
is placed in which the body is laid after being carefully roled
in a robe of some dressed skins; a paddle is also deposited
with them; a larger canoe is now reversed, overlaying and im
bracing the small one, and resting with it's gunwals on the
cross bars; one or more large mats of rushes or flags are then

Two swords, a bludgeon and a paddle,
apparently drawn by Lewis.

roled around the canoes and the whole securely lashed with
a long cord, usually made of the bark of the Arbor vita or
white cedar. on the cross bars which support the canoes is
frequently hung or laid various articles of cloathing culinary
eutensels &c. I cannot understand them sufficiently to make
any enquiries relitive to their religeous opinions, but presume
from their depositing various articles with their dead that they
believe in a state of future existence.

The persons who usually visit the entrance of this river for
the purpose of traffic or hunting I believe are either English
or Americans; the Indians inform us that they speak the
same language with ourselves, and give us proofs of their varacity
by repeating many words of English, as musquit, powder,
shot, [kjnife, file, damned rascal, sun of a bitch &c. whether
these traders are from Nootka sound, from some other late
establishement on this coast, or immediately from the U'States
or Great Brittain, I am at a loss to determine, nor can the
Indians inform us. the Indians Whom I have asked in what
direction the traders go when they depart from hence, or arrive
here, always point to the S.W. from which it is presumeable
that Nootka cannot be their destination; and as from
Indian information a majority of these traders annually visit
them about the beginning of April and remain with them six
or seven Months, they cannot come immediately from Great
Britain or the U'States, the distance being too great for them
to go and return in the ballance of the year. from this circumstance
I am sometimes induced to believe that there is some
other establishment on the coast of America south West of
this place of which little is but yet known to the world, or it
may be perhaps on some Island in the pacific ocean between
the Continents of Asia and America to the South West of us.[11]

This traffic on the part of the whites consists in vending, guns,
(principally old british or American musquits) powder, balls
and shot, Copper and brass kettles, brass teakettles and coffee
pots, blankets from two to three point, scarlet and blue Cloth
(coarse), plates and strips of sheet copper and brass, large
brass wire, knives, beads and tobacco with fishinghooks buttons
and some other small articles; also a considerable quantity
of Sailor's cloaths, as hats coats, trowsers and shirts, for
these they receive in return from the natives, dressed and undressed
Elk-skins, skins of the sea Otter, common Otter,
beaver, common fox, spuck,[12] and tiger cat; also dryed and
pounded sammon in baskets, and a kind of buisquit, which the
natives make of roots called by them shappelell. The natives
are extravegantly fond of the most common cheap blue and
white beads, of moderate size, or such that from 50. to 70.
will weigh one penneyweight. the blue is usually p[r]efered
to the white; these beads constitute the principal circulating
medium with all the indian tribes on this river; for these beads
they will dispose [of] any article they possess, the beads are
strung on strans of a fathom in length and in that manner
sold by the bredth or yard.