202 . RECREATION. 
— 
we went down the river. She remembered 
me. There was also a buck who had iust 
come up from Algonick. We could scarcely 
make them understand what we wanted. 
When we asked for the saddles they thought 
we meant Seattle. They could sabe San 
Francisco and Seattle, but not saddles. 
The Indian whose cache they occupied lived 
at the mouth of the Chittyna, and as he 
had the cabin locked and was away, we had 
to wait. 
We took the Indian who was at Taral, 
and tried to cross to the horses, but the 
ice was gone and there was no way to get 
across. The Indian invited us into his 
shack and we were glad to go, as it was 
extremely cold and we had left our blank- 
ets on the other side. This Indian could 
talk good English, as he had worked at 
Eyack in the summer. The Indians treated 
us well. They brought out their chinaware 
and gave us beans, fruit. bacon, tea, sugar, 
lard for butter, and baking powder bread. 
They also had boiled salmon. The old 
squaw, in honor of having white men in her 
shack, put on her best sack, made of a 
red handkerchief. She was prouder of it 
and her chinaware than white women are of 
their sealskins and silver. We slept that 
night on the floor, rolled in a moose skin. 
For breakfast we had beans, tea, berries, 
and their last piece of bacon. After break- 
fast the old woman took the platter from 
which we had eaten beans and licked it 
clean. She then boiled some salmon and 
had her own breakfast. She offered us 
some, but we declined. When we were 
ready to start she fell over herself trying 
to thank us for sleeping in her house. She 
said, “Tanks, tanks! White man hi-yu; you 
good white man sleep here,” etc. She would 
not let us thank her or give her anything. 
We had to go down about 3 miles from 
Taral in Wood’s canyon before finding a 
crossing. The Indian with us had never 
seen a horse. He saw the one we shot and 
wanted to know if we would “pot catch 
hima” the skin. We did so, I letting him 
have my knife to skin it with. He stopped 
with us that night, unwillingly, as, for some 
reason, they do not like to visit this side 
of the river. We helped him pack the 
horse skin and by the time we reached 
Taral the other Indian had returned from 
Chittyna. He gave us 4 pack saddles, 2 
riding saddles, 14 halters, one saddle bag, 
2 bridles and a lot of rope. They helped us 
pack them to the other bank, but would not 
go up where the horses were. When we 
bade the Indians good bye, they asked 
whither we were going. We told them up 
to the Tasnuna. They said we could not, as 
it was “hi-yu rock and 5 sleep.” They would 
take nothing from us, because we had so 
little ourselves. They told us to come back 
to them if we were short of grub and they 
would supply us. They said, “White mati 
ha-lo muck-a-muck. Indian hi-yu muck-a- 
muck. One moon hi-yu cold white man no 
muck-a-muck. Indian potlatch hi-yu muck- 
a-muck. One moon hi-yu cold, hi-yu wind, 
white man die’; which we found nearly 
right, 
We had hard work to catch the horses, 
as they were half wild. Built a rope cor- 
ral and got them in it, but they broke 
through 3 times. We then felled trees and 
built a log corral and drove them in. We 
had to pen them in a corner and pile logs 
around them before we could get the halt- 
ers on. We then started down the river, 
but the horses could not walk on the ice. 
They kept breaking through and slipping. 
We started over the hills, but after 10 days 
hard traveling had to turn back, as the 
country was full of canyons running at 
right angles to Wood’s canyon. By that 
time all our supplies were gone, except one 
pot of beans. We used to stay up at night 
to do our cooking, as the days were so short 
we did not have time to cook. It became 
dark about 2:30 p. m. and light about 8:30 
a. m. Every night we would secure a 
rope between 2 trees and then tie the horses 
on each side near the fire. When we pulled 
the halter of one of the horses he would 
pull back. Once a horse pulled back and 
fell on the fire and our last pot of beans. 
We could not get him up and had to pull 
the fire out from under him. He was badly 
burned around the legs. We lost our beans 
and had to go hungry that day and the 
next until we came to an Indian shack 
where they gave us salmon and tea. They 
did not have anything else. We slept in 
the shack. 
In going up the hill at Wood’s canyon 
a horse caught his pack in the roots of a 
falien tree and fell. He rolled over and 
over like a rubber ball. We heard him 
coming and had to hustle to keep out of 
his way. He went by us like a shot, heels 
over head. We thought he would be badly 
injured and took a gun down to shoot him, 
but when we arrived at the foot of the 
hill he was standing drinking at a hole in 
the ice, his pack in place and not a scratch 
on him. The weather at that time was ex- 
ceedingly cold and growing colder. Our 
fingers and faces were frost-bitten. Then 
the horses began to give out. They would 
lie down and not get up. We lifted one 
up 4 times, but he could not go over 50 
yards before he would drop again. We 
were compelled-to shoot 4 horses in one day. 
One broke through the ice and we had to 
go back to an Indian shack to get an axe 
to cut the ice around him. We hitched 2 
horses to him and pulled him out. As soon 
as he got out he froze hard as a rock. 
As the Indians up this part of the river 
were short of grub we cut this horse up 
EE 
