t him
with arrows."

Chapter XXII -- Camping with the Nez Perces

Soon after they had fixed their camp, the explorers bade farewell to
their good friend Tunnachemootoolt and his young men, who returned
to their homes farther down the river. Others of the Nez Perce, or
Chopunnish, nation visited them, and the strangers were interested in
watching the Indians preparing for their hunt. As they were to hunt the
deer, they had the head, horns, and hide of that animal so prepared
that when it was placed on the head and body of a hunter, it gave a very
deceptive idea of a deer; the hunter could move the head of the decoy
so that it looked like a deer feeding, and the suspicious animals were
lured within range of the Indians' bow and arrow.

On the sixteenth of May, Hohastillpilp and his young men also left the
white men's camp and returned to their own village. The hunters of the
party did not meet with much luck in their quest for game, only one deer
and a few pheasants being brought in for several days. The party were
fed on roots and herbs, a species of onion being much prized by them.
Bad weather confined them to their camp, and a common entry in their
journal refers to their having slept all night in a pool of water formed
by the falling rain; their tent-cover was a worn-out leathern affair
no longer capable of shedding the rain. While it rained in the meadows
where they were camped, they could see the snow covering the higher
plains above them; on those plains the snow was more than a foot deep,
and yet the plants and shrubs seemed to thrive in the midst of the snow.
On the mountains the snow was several feet in depth. The journalist
says: "So that within twenty miles of our camp we observe the rigors
of winter cold, the cool air of spring, and the oppressive heat of
midsummer." They kept a shrewd lookout for the possibilities of future
occupation of the land by white men; and, writing here of country and
its character, the journalist says: "In short, this district affords
many advantages to settlers, and if properly cultivated, would yield
every object necessary for the comfort and subsistence of civilized
man." But in their wildest dreams, Captains Lewis and Clark could not
have foreseen that in that identical region thrifty settlements of white
men should flourish and that the time would come when the scanty remnant
of the Chopunnish, whom we now call Nez Perces, would be gathered on a
reservation near their