For several days they remained in the neighborhood of these Indians, reposing after all their hardships, and feasting upon horse flesh and roots, obtained in subsequent traffic.  Many of the people ate to such excess as to render themselves sick, others were lame from their past journey; but all gradually recruited in the repose and abundance of the valley.  Horses were obtained here much more readily, and at a cheaper rate, than among the Snakes.  A blanket, a knife, or a half pound of blue beads would purchase a steed, and at this rate many of the men bought horses for their individual use.

This tribe of Indians, who are represented as a proud-spirited race, and uncommonly cleanly, never eat horses or dogs, nor would they permit the raw flesh of either to be brought into their huts.  They had a small quantity of venison in each lodge, but set so high a price upon it that the white men, in their impoverished state could not afford to purchase it.  They hunted the deer on horseback, “ringing,” or surrounding them, and running them down in a circle.  They were admirable horsemen, and their weapons were bows and arrows, which they managed with great dexterity.  They were altogether primitive in their habits, and seemed to cling to the usages of savage life, even when possessed of the aids of civilization.  They had axes among them, yet they generally made use of a stone mallet wrought into the shape of a bottle, and wedges of elk horn, in splitting their wood.  Though they might have two or three brass kettles hanging, in their lodges, yet they would frequently use vessels made of willow, for carrying water, and would even boll their meat in them, by means of hot stones.  Their women wore caps of willow neatly worked and figured.

As Carriere, the Canadian straggler, did not make his appearance for two or three days after the encampment in the valley two men were sent out on horseback in search of him.  They returned, however, without success.  The lodges of the Snake Indians near which he had been seen were removed, and the could find no trace of him.  Several days more elapsed, yet nothing was seen or heard of him, or the Snake horseman, behind whom he had been last observed.  It was feared, therefore, that he had either perished through hunger and fatigue; had been murdered by the Indians; or, being left to himself, had mistaken some hunting tracks for the trail of the party, and been led astray and lost.

The river on the banks of which they were encamped, emptied into the Columbia, was called by the natives the Eu-o-tal-la, or Umatilla, and abounded with beaver.  In the course of their sojourn in the valley which it watered, they twice shifted their camp, proceeding about thirty miles down its course, which was to the west.  A heavy fall of rain caused the river to overflow its banks, dislodged them from their encampment, and drowned three of their horses which were tethered in the low ground.

Further conversation with the Indians satisfied them that they were in the neighborhood of the Columbia.  The number of the white men who they said had passed down the river, agreed with that of M’Lellan, M’Kenzie, and their companions, and increased the hope of Mr. Hunt that they might have passed through the wilderness with safety.