infancy, was formerly practised by nearly all
the tribes of the Chinook family along the Columbia River. Various means
are used to accomplish this purpose, the most common and most cruel
being to bind a flat board on the forehead of an infant in such a way
that it presses on the skull and forces the forehead up on to the top of
the head. As a man whose head has been flattened in infancy grows older,
the deformity partly disappears; but the flatness of the head is always
regarded as a tribal badge of great merit.

"On the morning of the twenty-eighth," says the journal, having dried
our goods, we were about setting out, when three canoes came from above
to visit us, and at the same time two others from below arrived for the
same purpose. Among these last was an Indian who wore his hair in a
que, and had on a round hat and a sailor's jacket, which he said he had
obtained from the people below the great rapids, who bought them from
the whites. This interview detained us till nine o'clock, when we
proceeded down the river, which is now bordered with cliffs of loose
dark colored rocks about ninety feet high, with a thin covering of pines
and other small trees. At the distance of four miles we reached a small
village of eight houses under some high rocks on the right with a small
creek on the opposite side of the river.

"We landed and found the houses similar to those we had seen at the
great narrows; on entering one of them we saw a British musket, a
cutlass, and several brass tea-kettles, of which they seemed to be very
fond. There were figures of men, birds, and different animals, which
were cut and painted on the boards which form the sides of the room;
though the workmanship of these uncouth figures was very rough, they
were highly esteemed by the Indians as the finest frescos of more
civilized people. This tribe is called the Chilluckittequaw; their
language, though somewhat different from that of the Echeloots, has many
of the same words, and is sufficiently intelligible to the neighboring
Indians. We procured from them a vocabulary, and then, after buying five
small dogs, some dried berries, and a white bread or cake made of roots,
we left them. The wind, however, rose so high that we were obliged,
after going one mile, to land on the left side, opposite a rocky island,
and pass the day."

On the same day the white chiefs visited one of the most prominent of
the native houses built along the river.

"This," says