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Catholic and Protestant, and this trading post had been for several years in this part of the country, and so the Indians were to some extent accustomed to modify their manners and dress. They were not naked like Indians we had been among before.
A young Indian whose English name I think was Ellis, and whose dress was like that of a white man, had his hair shingled or cut short, and was very civilized in his manners. It was said he had been sent East to school when a boy and was well educated. I think he was a son of the high chief of the Nes Perce tribe, and would succeed his father. He appeared to realize the fact that he was an important man, and conversed fluently in English with our best talkers.
The Indian tribal names were Cayuse, Nes Perce, and Walla Walla, and we had many visitors from all these tribes. I think there was no hostile feeling among these people against us, but some of the emigrants were prejudiced against Indians of whatever kind, and were annoyed by the familiarity assumed by them in their intercourse with the whites. This probably came near leading to very serious consequences. We boys, I think, were more or less tinctured with this prejudice, and besides, did not realize the fact that to arouse a spirit of vengeance among this horde of barbarians, who could muster a thousand painted warriors in a single night, meant certain destruction to every man, woman, and child of our little party.
The first unpleasantness was between us white boys and the Indian boys. One day we were trading nails and scraps of iron of all kinds to the Indian boys for a root they called yampa—a small root half an inch thick, or less, and two or three times as long as thick—which, when dried, was almost as white as chalk, and easily ground between the teeth. Of the parsnip family, it is sweet and rich and very pleasant to the taste. This barter was going on on the sand drifts some three feet above the common level; it looked like an abruptsided sand drift. The barter was going on very sociably. We were munching yampa with great humor, and filling our pockets with the surplus roots. But some of the boys did not have pockets (some mothers will not make pockets in their boys' trousers because if boys have pockets they fill them so full of rocks, strings, dead beetles, dried fish worms, chewing
