im in.
When it came to prices for their beautiful skins of sea-otter,
almost nothing would do. Clark offered a watch,
a handkerchief, an American dollar, and a bunch of red
beads for a single skin.
"No! No!" in stentorian tone—"Tyee ka-mo-suck,—chief beads,"—the most common sort of large blue glass beads, the precious money of that country. Chiefs hung them on their bosoms, squaws bound them on their ankles, pretty maidens hung them in their hair. But Lewis and Clark had only a few and must reserve them for most pressing necessity.
Since that May morning when Captain Robert Gray discovered the Columbia River, fourteen years before, the Chinook Indians had learned the value of furs. Once they handed over their skins, and took without a murmur what the Boston skippers chose to give. Now, a hundred ships upon that shore had taught them craft.
One of old King Comcomly's people had a robe of sea-otter, "the fur of which was the most beautiful we had ever seen." In vain Lewis offered everything he had, nothing would purchase the treasured cloak but the belt of blue beads worn by Sacajawea.
On every hand among these coast tribes were blankets, sailor-clothes, guns,—old Revolutionary muskets mended for this trade,—powder and ball, the powder in little japanned tin flasks in which the traders sold it.
In what Clark calls "a guggling kind of language spoken mostly through the throat," with much pantomime and some English, conversation was carried on.
"Who are these traders?" asked Captain Lewis.
Old Comcomly, King of the Chinooks, on the north side, and Tyee Coboway, Chief of the Clatsops, on the south bank of the Columbia, tried to remember, and counted on their fingers,—
"Haley, three masts, stays some time," "Tallamon not a trader," "Callalamet has a wooden leg," "Davidson, no trader, hunts elk," "Skelley, long time ago, only one eye."
And then there were "Youens, Swipton, Mackey, Washington, Mesship, Jackson, Balch," all traders with
