Captain Clark returned in high humor, from a walk ahead with Chaboneau and Sa-ca-ja-we-a, and Chiefs Twisted-hair and Tetoh. He had shot a white crane, and a teal duck, and then had entered an Indian house that had been closed against him. The Indians had bowed before him, and covered their heads. When he had lighted his peace-pipe with his sun-glass, they had cried aloud in terror.
"They thought me a god, Merne," he laughed. "They had heard the gun, had seen the two birds drop, and believed that I had dropped, too. When I brought fire out of the sky, that finished the business. But I quieted them with presents."
However, near the mouth of a river, Chief Yellept of the Walla Walla Indians welcomed the white men, and wished them to stay. Captain Lewis said that they would visit him on their way back.
Chiefs Twisted-hair and Tetoh were sent ahead again, to assure the Indians that the white men intended no harm.
The first big falls, reached on October 23, were not the Tim-tim. The Tim-tim was still below. But Chief Twisted-hair said that the Indians down there were strangers to him, and unfriendly. He had heard that they were planning to attack the white men. And as he could not speak their language he wished to return to his own people.
He was persuaded to stay—and Tetoh also—until the passage of the Tim-tim.
