tioned, saw the woman marked by smallpox. Here, also, were met Clackamas and other Indians from the falls of the Willamette.
Elk, deer, and black bear were the large game their hunters killed. Some of the deer were extremely poor. They do not mention having seen flesh of any kind in the hands or camps of natives, much less a successful native hunter of such game.[1] Neither do they mention seeing a horse west of the Cascade Range. The receiving of one sturgeon from a native is mentioned, and some dried anchovies (smelt) . But the chief wealth of this richest part of the district—the most inviting to settlers in their estimation of any they had seen west of the Rocky Mountains, is the wapato—"the product of the numerous ponds in the interior of Wapato" (Sauvie's) Island. This was almost the sole staple article of commerce on the Columbia.
This bulb, the root of the arrowhead lily (sagittaria variabilis) is described by Lewis and Clark as "never out of season," and as being "gathered chiefly by the women, who employ for the purpose canoes from ten to fifteen feet long, about two feet wide, nine inches deep, and tapering from the middle. They are sufficient to contain a single person and several bushels of roots, yet so very light that a woman can carry them with ease. She takes it into a pond where the water is sometimes as high as the breast, and by means of her toes separates this bulb from the root, which, on being freed from the mud, immediately rises to the surface of the water and is thrown into the canoe. In this manner these patient
- ↑ The writer has had his home fifty-five years in the Willamette Valley, and has never seen or known of a native to kill a deer. He has known one spend a day hunting to kill five wood rats.
