Fort Clatsop, winter quarters — John Ordway: March 22, 1806

with a Small canoe to go on a head to hunt untill we come up.
carried their baggage with them. 6 men Sent out a hunting, a
1 Lewis says that these savages esteem a canoe of equal value, for trading
purposes, with their wives, and that one is generally given to the father in
exchange for his daughter. “I think the U. States,” he adds, “are indebted to
me another Uniform for that of which I have disposed on this occasion was
but little woarn.”
2 The best excuse for this course of action was the urgent necessity of
the explorers. Unfortunately, as the present editor views the case, it occur-
red to one of the interpreters to propose that a canoe be taken from the Clat-
sops “in lieu of 6 Elk which they stole from us this winter,” and the captains
adopted the suggestion. Yet the savages in taking the elk had acted no differ-
ently than the white men themselves on several occasions, in appropriating
the property of the Indians; and the former had sought to make payment
for the elk by sending an agent to the fort with some dogs for the explorers.
Had the latter based their purloining of the canoe on the ground of overpowering
necessity their action would have been more defensible.
8 Gass reports the name as “ulken,” while Lewis refers to them as anchovies.
The fish was the eulachon, for which see ante, 327, note 2.
330 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS
number of the Clatsop Indians visited us Sold us a dog1 & Some
Small dry fish and Some fancy Hats &C in the evening the hunt-
ers returned except one. had killed nothing.
1 Which “we purchased for our sick men.” Clark.
CHAPTER XIII
From Fort Clatsop to Walla Walla River,
March 23— May 1, 1806