As soon as this resolution was
known, Chaboneau and his wife requested that they might be permitted
to accompany us. The poor woman stated very earnestly that she had
travelled a great way with us to see the great water, yet she had never
been down to the coast, and now that this monstrous fish was also to
be seen, it seemed hard that she should be permitted to see neither the
ocean nor the whale. So reasonable a request could not be denied; they
were therefore suffered to accompany Captain Clark, who, January 6th,
after an early breakfast, set out with twelve men in two canoes."
After a long and tedious trip, the camp of the saltmakers was reached,
and Captain Clark and his men went on to the remains of the whale, only
the skeleton being left by the rapacious and hungry Indians. The whale
had been stranded between two shore villages tenanted by the Killamucks,
as Captain Clark called them. They are now known as the Tillamook
Indians, and their name is preserved in Tillamook County, Oregon. The
white men found it difficult to secure much of the blubber, or the oil.
Although the Indians had large quantities of both, they sold it with
much reluctance. In Clark's private diary is found this entry: "Small
as this stock (of oil and lubber) is I prize it highly; and thank
Providence for directing the whale to us; and think him more kind to
us than he was to Jonah, having sent this monster to be swallowed by us
instead of swallowing us as Jonah's did." While here, the party had a
startling experience, as the journal says:--
"Whilst smoking with the Indians, Captain Clark was surprised, about ten
o'clock, by a loud, shrill outcry from the opposite village, on hearing
which all the Indians immediately started up to cross the creek, and the
guide informed him that someone had been killed.
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