As usual, Mackenzie had to exercise great bravery, tact, and guile to get into peaceful conversation with these half-frightened, half-angry people.

The peacemaking generally concluded with the distribution of trinkets amongst the men and women, and presents of sugar to the children.

Talking with these folk, however, through such interpreters as there were amongst the Indians of his crew, he learnt that lower down on the Fraser River there was a peculiarly fierce, malignant race, living in vast caves or subterranean dwellings, who would certainly massacre the Europeans if they attempted to pass through their country on their way to the sea.
He therefore stopped and set some of his men to work to make a new canoe.

He noticed, by the by, that these Amerindians of the Fraser had small pointed canoes, "made after the fashion of the Eskimo".
Renewing their voyage, they reached a house the roof of which just appeared above the ground.

It was deserted by its inhabitants, who had been alarmed at the approach of the white men, but in the neighbourhood appeared gesticulating warriors with bows and arrows.
Yet these people of underground houses turned out to be friendly and very ready to give information, partly because they were in communication with the Amerindian tribes to the east of the Rocky Mountains.