Lewis: April 16, 1806

Wednesday April 16th 1806. About 8 A.M. Capt. Clark passed the river with
the two interpreters, the indian woman and nine men in order to trade with
the natives for their horses, for which purpose he took with him a good
part of our stock of merchandize. I remained in camp; sent out the hunters
very early in the morning, and set Sergts. Gass and Pryor with some others
at work to make a parsel of packsaddles. twelve horses will be sufficient
to transport our baggage and some pounded fish which we intend taking with
us as a reserved store for the rocky mountains. I was visited today by
several of the natives, and amused myself in making a collection of the
esculent plants in the neighbourhood such as the Indians use, a specemine
of which I preserved. I also met with sundry other plants which were
strangers to me which I also preserved, among others there is a currant
which is now in blume and has yellow blossom something like the yellow
currant of the Missouri but is a different speceis. Reubin Feilds returned
in the evening and brought with him a large grey squrrel and two others of
a kind I had never before seen. they are a size less than the grey
squirrel common to the middle atlantic states and of a pided grey and
yellowish brown colour, in form it resembles our grey squrrel precisely. I
had them skined leaving the head feet and tail to them and placed in the
sun to dry. Joseph Feilds brought me a black pheasant which he had killed;
this I found on examination to be the large black or dark brown pheasant I
had met with on the upper part of the Missouri. it is as large as a well
grown fowl the iris of the eye is of a dark yellowish brown, the puple
black, the legs are booted to the toes, the tail is composed of 18 black
feathers tiped with bluish white, of which the two in the center are
reather shorter than the others which are all of the same length. over the
eye there is a stripe of a 1/4 of an inch in width uncovered with feathers
of a fine orrange yellow. the wide spaces void of feathers on the side of
the neck are also of the same colour. I had some parts of this bird
preserved. our present station is the last point at which there is a
single stick of timber on the river for a great distance and is the
commencement of the open plains which extend nearly to the base of the
rocky Mts. Labuish returned this evening having killed two deer I sent and
had them brought in. this evening Capt. C. informed me by some of the men
whom he sent over that that he had obtained no horses as yet of the
natives. that they promised to trade with him provided he would remove to
their vil-lage. to this he had consented and should proceede to the
Skillute village above the long narrows as soon as the men returned whom
he had sent to me for some other articles. I dispatched the men on their
return to capt. C. immediately with these articles and he set out with his
party accompanyed by the natives to their village where he remained all
night.the natives who had spent the day with me seemed very well
disposed, they left me at 6 in the evening and returned to their
rispective villages. the hunters informed me that they saw some Antelopes,
& the tracks of several black bear, but no appearance of any Elk. we
were informed by the Indians that the river which falls in on the S. side
of the Columbia just above the Eneshur village heads in Mount hood and
dose not water the extensive country which we have heretofore calculated
on. a great portion of that extensive tract of country to the S. and S. W.
of the Columbia and it’s S. E. branch, and between the same and the waters
of Callifornia must be watered by the Multnomah river.-