■ PUGET SOUND AND OKONAGAN. 461 



within eight miles, where there is a salmon-fishery. Few skins are 

 obtained here, and the extreme scarcity of game and fur animals is 

 remarkable throughout all this part of middle Oregon. This is some- 

 what difficult to account for, as we are well satisfied that there is abun- 

 dance of food, and that all kinds of cattle would thrive exceedingly 

 in this section, where grass is so abundant. 



Okonagan and the old Spokane house, on the river of the same name, 

 (now abandoned,) were the first posts established in this country by 

 the American Company, some twenty-nine years prior to our visit. 

 Falling into the possession of the Northwest Company, they were, on 

 the union of that Company with the Hudson Bay Company, passed 

 over to the latter. Okonagan is situated on a poor, flat, sandy neck, 

 about two miles above the junction of the river of that name with the 

 Columbia. It is a square, picketed in the same manner as those 

 already described, but destitute of bastions, and removed sixty yards 

 from the Columbia. Within the pickets there is a large house for the 

 reception of the Company's officers, consisting of several apartments, 

 and from each end of it two rows of low mud huts run towards the 

 entrance : these serve as offices and dwellings for the trappers and 

 their families. In the centre there is an open space. 



French is the language spoken here, as it is at all the other posts 

 of the Company. 



Half a mile above the mouth of the Okonagan, it was found to be 

 three hundred feet wide: it is a dull, turbid stream. The Columbia, 

 at this place, was found to be sixteen hundred feet wide. 



Besides the care of the barges for navigating the river, and the 

 horses for the land journey to the northern posts, they collect here 

 what skins they can. The country aflfords about eighty beaver-skins 

 during the year, the price for each of which is usually twenty charges 

 of powder and ball. Some bear, marten, and other skins, are also 

 obtained, for which the prices vary ; and it appears to be the practice 

 of the Company to buy all the skins that are brought in, in order to 

 encourage the Indians to procure them. At Nisqually, Mr. Anderson 

 informed me that many were bought that were afterwards destroyed, 

 as they were not worth transportation. 



At this post they have some goats, and thirty-five head of very fine 

 cattle, which produce abundance of milk and butter. Neither of 

 these are yet permitted to be slaughtered, and the only animal food 

 used, is a species of rat, called " siffleurs," which burrows among the 

 stones on the hill-sides in great numbers. These the Indians catch 



VOL. IV. 116 



