[Meriwether Lewis (1805)] visited by many of the natives among others the Big white, the Coal, big-man, hairy horn and the black man, I smoked with them, after which they retired, a deportment not common, for they usually pester us with their good company the ballance of the day after once being introduced to our apartment… the blacksmith’s have proved a happy resoce to us in our present situation as I believe it would have been difficult to have devised any other method to have procured corn from the natives. The Indians are extravegantly fond of sheet iron of which they form arrow-points and manufacter into instruments for scraping and dressing their buffaloe robes— I permited the blacksmith to dispose of a part of a sheet-iron callaboos which had been nearly birnt out on our passage up the river, and for each piece about four inches square he obtained from seven to eight gallons of corn from the natives who appeared extreemly pleased with the exchange.

[William Clark (1806)] No. 3 A species of fir which one of my men informs me is precisely the same with that called the balsam fir of Canada. it grows here to considerable size, being from 1½ to 4 feet in diameter and rises to the hight of eight or an hundred feet… (No. 4) is a species of fir which in point of size is much that of No. 2. the stem simple and branching ascending and proliferous; the bark of a redish dark brown and thicker than that of No. 3. it is divided with small longitudinal interstices, but these are not so much ramifyed as in species No. 2. … No 5. is a species of fir which arrives to the size of Nos. 2 and 4, the stem simple branching diffuse and proliferous. the bark thin, dark brown, much divided with small longitudinal interstices and sometimes scaleing off in thin rolling flakes … No. 6 the white pine; or what is usually so called in Virginia. I see no difference between this and that of the mountains in Virginia; unless it be the uncommon length of cone of this found here, which are sometimes 16 or 18 inches in length and about 4 inches in circumpherence. I do not recollect those of virginia perfectly but it strikes me that they are not so long. this species is not common I have only seen it but in one instance since I have been in this neighbourhood.