This Was
At The Head Of One Of The Northern Branches Of The Snake River, And,
Their Scanty Stock Of
Provisions being nearly exhausted, the whole
party was compelled to live mostly on bears and dogs; deer, antelope,
and elk,
Usually abundant, were now scarce because the region had been
closely hunted over by the Indians before their arrival.
Lewis and Clark had killed a number of bears and saved the skins of
the more interesting specimens, and the variations they found in size,
color of the hair, etc., made great difficulty in classification.
Wishing to get the opinion of the Chopumish Indians, near one of whose
villages they were encamped, concerning the various species, the
explorers unpacked their bundles and spread out for examination all
the skins they had taken. The Indian hunters immediately classed the
white, the deep and the pale grizzly red, the grizzly dark-brown - in
short, all those with the extremities of the hair of a white or frosty
color without regard to the color of the ground or foil - under the
name of hoh-host. The Indians assured them that these were all of the
same species as the white bear, that they associated together, had
longer nails than the others, and never climbed trees. On the other
hand, the black skins, those that were black with white hairs
intermixed or with a white breast, the uniform bay, the brown, and the
light reddish-brown, were classed under the name yack-ah, and were
said to resemble each other in being smaller and having shorter nails,
in climbing trees, and being so little vicious that they could be
pursued with safety.
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