INDIAN COMMERCE.



  Like the men of all savage nations, they made slaves of
their captives, and their women. The dress of the latter
consisted merely of a short petticoat, manufactured from
the fibre of the cedar bark, previously soaked and pre-
pared. This material was worked into a fringe, attached
to a girdle, and only long enough to reach the middle of
the thigh. When the season required it, they added a
mantle of skins. Their bodies were anointed with fish-oil,
and sometimes painted with red ochre in imitation of the
men. For ornaments they wore strings of glass beads,
and also of a white shell found on the northern coast, called
haiqua. Such were the Chinooks, who lived upon the
coast.
  Farther up the river, on the eastern side of the Cascade
range of mountains, a people lived, the same, yet different
from the Chinooks. They resembled them in form, fea-
tures, and manner of getting a living. But they were
more warlike and more enterprising; they even had some
notions of commerce, being traders between the coast
Indians and those to the east of them. They too were
great fishermen, but used the net instead of fishing in
boats. Great scaffoldings were erected every year at the
narrows of the Columbia, known as the Dalles, where, as
the salmon passed up the river in the spring, in incredible
numbers, they were caught and dried. After drying, the
fish were then pounded fine between two stones, pressed
tightly into packages or bales of about a hundred pounds,
covered with matting, and corded up for transportation.
The bales were then placed in storehouses built to receive
them where they awaited customers.
  By and by there came from the coast other Indians,
with different varieties of fish, to exchange for the salmon
in the Wish-ram warehouses. And by and by there came
from the plains to the eastward, others who had horses,



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