When sufficiently dry, they are pounded fine
between two stones, pressed into the smallest compass, and packed
in baskets or bales of grass matting, about two feet long and one in
diameter, lined with the cured skin of a salmon. The top is likewise
covered with fish skins, secured by cords passing through holes in the
edge of the basket. Packages are then made, each containing twelve of
these bales, seven at bottom, five at top, pressed close to each other,
with the corded side upward, wrapped in mats and corded. These are
placed in dry situations, and again covered with matting. Each of these
packages contains from ninety to a hundred pounds of dried fish, which
in this state will keep sound for several years.**
**(Lewis and Clarke, vol. ii. p. 32.)
We have given this process at some length, as furnished by the first
explorers, because it marks a practiced ingenuity in preparing articles
of traffic for a market, seldom seen among our aboriginals. For like
reason we would make especial mention of the village of Wishram, at the
head of the Long Narrows, as being a solitary instance of an aboriginal
trading mart, or emporium. Here the salmon caught in the neighboring
rapids were "warehoused," to await customers. Hither the tribes from
the mouth of the Columbia repaired with the fish of the sea-coast, the
roots, berries, and especially the wappatoo, gathered in the lower parts
of the river, together with goods and trinkets obtained from the ships
which casually visit the coast.
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