Fort Wallah-Wallah is surrounded by the tribe of the same name, as
well as by the Skynses and the Nez Perces; who bring to it the furs and
peltries collected in their hunting expeditions. The Wallah-Wallahs are
a degenerate, worn-out tribe. The Nez Perces are the most numerous and
tractable of the three tribes just mentioned. Mr. Pambrune informed
Captain Bonneville that he had been at some pains to introduce the
Christian religion, in the Roman Catholic form, among them, where it had
evidently taken root; but had become altered and modified, to suit their
peculiar habits of thought, and motives of action; retaining, however,
the principal points of faith, and its entire precepts of morality. The
same gentleman had given them a code of laws, to which they conformed
with scrupulous fidelity. Polygamy, which once prevailed among them to
a great extent, was now rarely indulged. All the crimes denounced by the
Christian faith met with severe punishment among them. Even theft,
so venial a crime among the Indians, had recently been punished with
hanging, by sentence of a chief.
There certainly appears to be a peculiar susceptibility of moral and
religious improvement among this tribe, and they would seem to be one
of the very, very few that have benefited in morals and manners by an
intercourse with white men. The parties which visited them about twenty
years previously, in the expedition fitted out by Mr.
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