illion, a ceremony which among the Shoshonees is emblematic of
peace. After they had become composed, he informed them by signs of his
wish to go to their camp in order to see their chiefs and warriors; they
readily obeyed, and conducted the party along the same road down the
river. In this way they marched two miles, when they met a troop of
nearly sixty warriors mounted on excellent horses riding at full speed
towards them. As they advanced captain Lewis put down his gun, and went
with the flag about fifty paces in advance. The chief who with two men
were riding in front of the main body, spoke to the women, who now
explained that the party was composed of white men, and showed
exultingly the presents they had received. The three men immediately
leaped from their horses, came up to Captain Lewis and embraced him with
great cordiality, putting their left arm over his right shoulder and
clasping his back, applying at the same time their left cheek to his,
and frequently vociferating ah hi e! ah hi e! "I am much pleased, I am
much rejoiced." The whole body of warriors now came forward, and our men
received the caresses, and no small share of the grease and paint of
their new friends. After this fraternal embrace, of which the motive was
much more agreeable than the manner, captain Lewis lighted a pipe and
offered it to the Indians who had now seated themselves in a circle
around the party. But before they would receive this mark of friendship
they pulled off their moccasins, a custom as we afterwards learnt, which
indicates the sacred sincerity of their professions when they smoke with
a stranger, and which imprecates on themselves the misery of going
barefoot forever if they are faithless to their words, a penalty by no
means light to those who rove over the thorny plains of their country.
It is not unworthy to remark the analogy which some of the customs of
those wild children of the wilderness bear to those recorded in holy
writ. Moses is admonished to pull off his shoes, for the place on which
he stood was holy ground. Why this was enjoined as an act of peculiar
reverence; whether it was from the circumstance that in the arid region
in which the patriarch then resided, it was deemed a test of the
sincerity of devotion to walk upon the burning sands barefooted, in some
measure analogous to the pains inflicted by the prickly pear, does not
appear. After smoking a few pipes, some trifling presents were
distributed amongst