214 



at least by the tribes who have much intercourse with tlie whites. It was 

 tlie universal currency through an extensive district. On the Klamath River, 

 it is valued even more higlily than on the Sound and the Columbia; and 

 those aboriginal peddlers, the Klikatat, frequently carry it to Southern 

 Oregon for sale. The relative value of skins, I luiderstand, to have been 

 fi.xed by the fur-traders, who assumed the beaver as the unit of computation. 

 The Indians are now all well acquainted with our coins, from the eagle to 

 the dime, for which there are corresponding names in the jargon. There 

 does not seem to have been any system of keeping accounts peculiar to 

 them or extending beyond the simplest idea. Their computation was by 

 visible objects, as the fingers, small pebbles, or bits of stick, and very prob- 

 ably notched sticks, the most primitive of all records. In their dealings 

 with the traders, however, they speedily comprehend the more ordinary 

 weights and measures, to which, in the jargon, names were applied; as, 

 iklit ill, one weight for our pound; ilM slik, or etJdon, one yard or fathom; 

 ikJit tamaulikh, one tub or bushel; iJchtle sack, one sack, &c. I have never 

 met with mnemonical signs or pictorial help to memory. 



Time was measured by moons, say from full to full and by warm and 

 cold seasons; one warm and one cold constituting the year. Names 

 for the intermediate seasons exist, though I am not certain that the same 

 signification is attached to them as with us. Mr. Hale assigns appellations 

 to the various months in the language of some of the Flathead tribes. The 

 Indians on this side of the mountains also had a name for each moon, by 

 wliich, as they say, they could know how long it would be before the salmon 

 came, &c. Beyond a few days, they did not apply that period as a meas- 

 ure, for instance, not as determining the length of the moon; nor can I learn 

 that they had any times corresponding to our week or to part of a moon. 

 With the tides and their periods of recurrence, those who live on the salt- 

 water are of course familiar; I have not been able to ascertain whether 

 they have speculated on their cause. 



HOUSES. 



The planks of their houses are split from the tree with a tool made of 

 elk-horn, or with wooden wedges, driven by a stone mallet, and are then 



