Friday March 28th 1806
[Lewis]
This morning we set
out very early and at 9 A. M. arrived at the old Indian Village on Lard side
of Deer Island
where we
found our hunters had halted and left one man with the two canoes at their
camp; they had arrived last evening at this place and six of them turned out
to hunt very early this morning; by 10 A. M. they all returned to camp
having killed seven deer. these were all of the common
fallow deer with the long tail.{
Columbia white-tailed deer]
I measured the tail of one of these bucks which was upwards of 17 Inches
long; they are very poor, tho' they are better than the black tailed fallow
deer of the coast. {Columbian
black-tailed deer}
Our hunters came in and had killed 7 deer in all. Some of the men went to bring in the meat, and others went out and killed some geese and ducks. At the last village we passed I took notice of a difference in the dress of the females, from that of those below, about the coast and Hailey's Bay. Instead of the short petticoat, they have a piece of thin dressed skin tied tight round their loins, with a narrow slip coming up between their thighs. On this island there are a greater number of snakes, than I had ever seen in any other place; they appeared almost as numerous as the blades of grass; and are a species of Garter snake. When our men went for the deer, they found that the fowls {The "fowl" had dragged the carcass 30 yards and broken the backbones, most likely California Condors} had devoured four of the carcases entirely, except the bones. So they brought in the other two; and we finished our canoes and put them in the water. The Columbia river is now very high, which makes it more difficult to ascend.
Kalama
