Indian guide from the Whitman Mission at Waiilatpu, detailed by Doctor Whitman to guide the emigrant train through the mountains to the portage of the Columbia, made them a potlatch (gift) of them to show his regard for the tillicums (friends).
Martha and Uncle Adzi looked in amazement at the elderberries. “Why,” Martha exclaimed, “they’re like the elderberries back home, only larger and with fuller clusters. And to think that fruit could hang on the bushes so late.”
“Yes,” said Manuel, only there they grew on bushes and here on trees. We'd never ’a’ got ’em if I hadn’t been along to bend down the limbs.”
“We must hurry supper,” said Martha, and Rose Ann and Esther Amelia immediately began looking over the dark blue berries, washing them at a little spring that trickled down into a clean rocky basin a few yards above the camp. Martha bustled about between camp fire and table. Once she disappeared into the depths of the wagon and, lifting up a board in the false bottom, came forth after a little rummaging with a piece of maple sugar as large as two good-sized fists. Grudgingly she shaved off a scant portion to sweeten the stewing berries.
“Didn’t know mother had maple sugar left, did you, Manuel?” she bantered. “Wouldn’t have been left if you children had known it. I never saw such young ones for sweets. This is all that’s left of the hundred pounds father made the spring we left Illinois.”
Uncle Adzi spoke up quickly. “Don’t ye fret, Marthie. They say there’s more sugar’n anythin’
