This fastidiousness does not,
however, seem to proceed so much from any dislike to the food, as from
attachment to the animal itself; for many of them eat very heartily of
the horse-beef which we give them."
On the first day of May, having travelled forty miles from their camp
near the mouth of the Walla Walla, they camped between two points at
which are now situated the two towns of Prescott, on the south, and
Waitesburg, on the north. Their journal says:--
"We had scarcely encamped when three young men came up from the
Wollawollah village, with a steel-trap which had inadvertently been
left behind, and which they had come a whole day's journey in order to
restore. This act of integrity was the more pleasing, because, though
very rare among Indians, it corresponded perfectly with the general
behavior of the Wollawollahs, among whom we had lost carelessly several
knives, which were always returned as soon as found. We may, indeed,
justly affirm, that of all the Indians whom we had met since leaving the
United States, the Wollawollahs were the most hospitable, honest, and
sincere."
Chapter XXI -- Overland east of the Columbia
It was now early in May, and the expedition, travelling eastward along
Touchet Creek, were in the country of their friends, the Chopunnish. On
the third, they were agreeably surprised to meet Weahkootnut, whom
they had named Bighorn from the fact that he wore a horn of that animal
suspended from his left arm. This man was the first chief of a large
band of Chopunnish, and when the expedition passed that way, on their
path to the Pacific, the last autumn, he was very obliging and useful to
them, guiding them down the Snake, or Lewis River.
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