r chief as a
hostage, we passed to the other village, and succeeded in recovering the
rest of the guns, and about a third of the other goods.

Although they had been the aggressors, yet as they had had two men
killed and we had not lost any on our side, we thought it our duty to
conform to the usage of the country, and abandon to them the remainder
of the stolen effects, to cover, according to their expression, the
bodies of their two slain compatriots. Besides, we began to find
ourselves short of provisions, and it would not have been easy to get at
our enemies to punish them, if they had taken refuge in the woods,
according to their custom when they feel themselves the weaker party. So
we released our prisoner, and gave him a flag, telling him that when he
presented it unfurled, we should regard it as a sign of peace and
friendship: but if, when we were passing the portage, any one of the
natives should have the misfortune to come near the baggage, we would
kill him on the spot. We re-embarked on the 19th, and on the 22d reached
the fort, where we made a report of our martial expedition. We found Mr.
Stuart very ill of his wounds, especially of the one in the side, which
was so much swelled that we had every reason to think the arrow had been
poisoned.

If we did not do the savages as much harm as we might have done, it was
not from timidity but from humanity, and in order not to shed human
blood uselessly. For after all, what good would it have done us to have
slaughtered some of these barbarians, whose crime was not the effect of
depravity and wickedness, but of an ardent and irresistible desire to
ameliorate their condition? It must be allowed also that the interest,
well-understood, of the partners of the Northwest Company, was opposed
to too strongly marked acts of hostility on their part: it behooved them
exceedingly not to make irreconciliable enemies of the populations
neighboring on the portages of the Columbia, which they would so often
be obliged to pass and repass in future. It is also probable that the
other natives on the banks, as well as of the river as of the sea, would
not have seen with indifference, their countrymen too signally or too
rigorously punished by strangers; and that they would have made common
cause with the former to resist the latter, and perhaps even to drive
them from the country.

I must not omit to state that all the firearms surrendered by the
Indians on this occasion, were fo