known to the whites—a silent, crafty, remorseless man, Peu-peu-mox-mox, or Yellow Serpent. At this very date subsequent history shows this chief just returned from California, where he had failed in a business venture, and also in getting satisfaction or revenge for the death of his son Elijah, killed by an American over property stolen from the latter by local Indians and by the Walla Wallas from the latter. During the five days I was with the party the chief rarely spoke, even to the young woman who sat beside him and evidently tried to engage his attention. His silence seemed to me yet more of sullen disappointment than of natural dignity. Only once did he show a different mood. Then his men turned the canoe from the north shore, which we were hugging, in chase of two men in a single canoe making from midstream to the south shore with all their might. We followed, all the Indians under excitement. My curiosity was greatly aroused to know what it meant. We landed by the canoe we had been chasing, and went into the lodge that had been so located as to make it extremely dangerous to invade it, so surrounded was it with rocks forming a cover for defenders. The manner of the inmates was very quiet; that of our chief as he went in was that of a friendly visitor. He spoke low, and was answered in the same manner. After a few minutes, during which but few words were said, one of the two men in the lodge brought out a small sturgeon and presented it to our big chief, who, by a nod, guided it to our little slave warrior, and we then ceremoniously left the family of chinook sturgeon fishers with this peace offering of one little sturgeon of twenty-five or thirty pounds. It was as if the large elk wolf, which the chief in some way resembled, had taken to mouse hunting.
