In the course of their sojourn in the valley which
it watered, they twice shifted their camp, proceeding about thirty miles
down its course, which was to the west. A heavy fall of rain caused the
river to overflow its banks, dislodged them from their encampment, and
drowned three of their horses which were tethered in the low ground.
Further conversation with the Indians satisfied them that they were in
the neighborhood of the Columbia. The number of the white men who they
said had passed down the river, agreed with that of M'Lellan, M'Kenzie,
and their companions, and increased the hope of Mr. Hunt that they might
have passed through the wilderness with safety.
These Indians had a vague story that white men were coming to trade
among them; and they often spoke of two great men named Ke-Koosh and
Jacquean, who gave them tobacco, and smoked with them. Jacquean, they
said, had a house somewhere upon the great river. Some of the Canadians
supposed they were speaking of one Jacquean Finlay, a clerk of the
Northwest Company, and inferred that the house must be some trading
post on one of the tributary streams of the Columbia. The Indians were
overjoyed when they found this band of white men intended to return
and trade with them. They promised to use all diligence in collecting
quantities of beaver skins, and no doubt proceeded to make deadly war
upon that sagacious, but ill-fated animal, who, in general, lived in
peaceful insignificance among his Indian neighbors, before the intrusion
of the white trader.
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