Soul Stance River - 29

The Nez Perce Indians who lead lean lives on these knolls and river brooks have a style of soul that sneaks into the songs of the sun and plays on the prayers in the patience of their dreams, they have welcomed us as messengers of revival, like the Shoshone they are underarmed and underestimated eager for an epoch of new earnings for their children, their chief, Twisted Hair is being very cooperative having his women feeding us with copious amounts of dried salmon and roots however, this diet, combined with our malnourished bodies has induced dysentery and food poisoning symptoms, there is a suspicion that this is a strategem of the Indians to weaken us so to facilitate the capture of the wealth that our supplies represent, the cooking equipment, tools, rifles and coloful trinkets, For two weeks most of us have been sick as dirt fed dogs emaciated and irrate with boredom while Clark and few others have managed to remain relatively healthy burning out ponderosa pines to hollow out for the canoes we'll use on the swift Columbia, the Nez have taught us this method and they have told us that the headwaters of that river is only five days away, we were also informed that the tribe was initially contemplating killing us but that an Indian woman named Watkuweis whom had been abducted by Blackfeet raiders six years ago sold into bondage to Canadian trappers, and escaped them, finding her way back to her People, the Nez Perce recently intervened on our behalf telling Twisted Hair and his conspirators that they should be kind and forward thinking, " These are the people who helped me...Do them no hurt..." meaning that the Whites she lived with were compassionate and did her no real harm, afterall, we are the first White Men that these Indians ever saw, Waterborne again, at last, Hallayuela, we're goin downhill for the first time since St. Louis and it feels damn good n' fast too, rushin through the whitewater cascades has got us bumpin and flyin like rascal crows in a heavy wind, the canoe I'm in came into a curve that smacked us broadside into a cliff face that puts the pulse in nerves water boiling up wild and high slapping our heads with the derision of drunk damsels, crashing down into a 10 foot drop between sandstone skyscrapers of 3, 000 feet that usher us urgently yet gently into a river whose water is so clear that you'd think its possible to float on whispers, Natives from the Wallawallas and Yakima tribes watch us like anxious squirrels they think we're nuts, and would love to salvage the wreckage of our mission, our faithful Shoshone guide, "Old Toby" , who saw us through those wicked Bitterroots began looking at us as though we are the spawn of Satan and fled from us this morning without even being paid, I wonder how this trip will change his opinion of Americans, J.A.B.