The people who were to be punished, however--the Cath-le-yach-é-yach, a Chinookan tribe living below the Cascades--were not all frightened, and when they were required to deliver up the property taken from Keith and Stuart, they declared themselves ready to do so, but not until after the whites had delivered to them those who had killed two of their people. They sent off their women and children into the forest and prepared to fight. There were multitudinous parleys lasting for three or four days, at the end of which time the whites, regarding discretion as the better part of valor, “without recovering the property, firing a gun, or securing a single prisoner, sounded a retreat and returned home on the ninth day, having made matters ten times worse than they were before.”
The expedition was much derided by the Indians, and the white people who took part in it were extremely mortified about it. The situation was really one of war, and when a short time afterward the Northwest brigade departed for the interior, the Indians at the Cascades did not come near to the camp nor in any degree interrupt their progress.
Consulted by McDonald, who was in charge of the Columbia trade, Ross had urged on him the importance of taking the “usual precautions” in travelling up the river. Nevertheless, no guard was set at night, and an alarm taking place, people jumped up and began to fire their guns at random and one of the men was shot dead. There seems no reason to suppose that there were actually any Indians in the camp.
At Fort Okanagan the expedition passed on, leaving Ross behind in charge of the post. He was now in a prairie country where horses were absolutely essential to travel, and no horses were to be had nearer than Eyakema valley, two hundred miles away, where the horse Indians, Cayuses, Nez Percés, and other warlike tribes encamped each spring, to collect the roots of the camas. Here horses were plenty, but, as it was a great camp occupied by many different tribes, to visit it was to incur some danger. However, Ross took a few trade goods and set out with three men, young McKay and two French Canadians, these last taking with them their Indian wives, to assist in the care of the horses.