[First Across the Continent by Noah Brooks]@TWC D-Link book
First Across the Continent

CHAPTER XX -- The Last Stage of the Columbia
15/17

But our most valuable medicine was eye-water, which we distributed, and which, indeed, they required very much.
"A little before sunset the Chimnapoos, amounting to one hundred men and a few women, came to the village, and, joining the Wollawollahs, who were about the same number of men, formed themselves in a circle round our camp, and waited very patiently till our men were disposed to dance, which they did for about an hour, to the music of the violin.

They then requested the Indians to dance.

With this they readily complied; and the whole assemblage, amounting, with the women and children of the village, to several hundred, stood up, and sang and danced at the same time.
The exercise was not, indeed, very violent nor very graceful; for the greater part of them were formed into a solid column, round a kind of hollow square, stood on the same place, and merely jumped up at intervals, to keep time to the music.

Some, however, of the more active warriors entered the square and danced round it sideways, and some of our men joined in with them, to the great satisfaction of the Indians.
The dance continued till ten o'clock." By the thirtieth of April the expedition was equipped with twenty-three horses, most of which were young and excellent animals; but many of them were afflicted with sore backs.

All Indians are cruel masters and hard riders, and their saddles are so rudely made that it is almost impossible for an Indian's horse to be free from scars; yet they continue to ride after the animal's back is scarified in the most horrible manner.
The expedition was now in what we know as Walla Walla County, Washington, and they were travelling along the river Walla Walla, leaving the Columbia, which has here a general direction of northerly.
The course of the party was northeast, their objective point being that where Waitesburg is now built, near the junction of Coppie Creek and the Touchet River.


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