white strangers soon spread, and next morning about two hundred
more of the Indians assembled to gaze on them. Later in the day, having
gotten away from their numerous inquisitive visitors, the explorers
passed down-stream and landed on a small island to examine a curious
vault, in which were placed the remains of the dead of the tribe. The
journal says:--

"This place, in which the dead are deposited, is a building about sixty
feet long and twelve feet wide, formed by placing in the ground poles
or forks six feet high, across which a long pole is extended the whole
length of the structure; against this ridge-pole are placed broad boards
and pieces of canoes, in a slanting direction, so as to form a shed.
It stands cast and west, and neither of the extremities is closed.
On entering the western end we observed a number of bodies wrapped
carefully in leather robes, and arranged in rows on boards, which were
then covered with a mat. This was the part destined for those who had
recently died; a little further on, bones half decayed were scattered
about, and in the centre of the building was a large pile of them heaped
promiscuously on each other. At the eastern extremity was a mat, on
which twenty-one skulls were placed in a circular form; the mode of
interment being first to wrap the body in robes, then as it decays to
throw the bones into the heap, and place the skulls together. From
the different boards and pieces of canoes which form the vault were
suspended, on the inside, fishing-nets, baskets, wooden bowls, robes,
skins, trenchers, and trinkets of various kinds, obviously intended
as offerings of affection to deceased relatives. On the outside of the
vault were the skeletons of several horses, and great quantities of
their bones were in the neighborhood, which induced us to believe that
these animals were most probably sacrificed at the funeral rites of
their masters."

Just below this stand the party met Indians who traded with tribes
living near the great falls of the Columbia. That place they designated
as "Tum-tum," a word that signifies the throbbing of the heart. One of
these Indians had a sailor's jacket, and others had a blue blanket and
a scarlet blanket. These articles had found their way up the river from
white traders on the seashore.

On the twenty-first of October the explorers discovered a considerable
stream which appeared to rise in the southeast and empty into the
Columbia on the left. To this