Chapter I: BILL McGARVEY’S STORE (1)

The Old Klamath Bluffs Store, or fort, and in late years the Klamath Post Office, was built in 1855 or 1856, by a man named Snider. He conducted it as a trading post for Indians, soldiers and travelers alike. It was built of rough split lumber and strongly made of double walls with sawed blocks four inches thick placed between the walls, and was bullet proof, with port-holes so that a few white men could defend themselves against many Indians. This store is located twenty-four miles up the river from its mouth, and is about eighteen miles down the river from Weitchpec or the junction of the Trinity River, and something like forty miles below Orleans Bar on the Klamath. Orleans Bar was at one time the County Seat of Klamath County. The old store is on the north bank of the river on a bar that was formed in ancient times, and is high enough to make it safe from all high waters. It is a beautiful, sunny spot and on the line of travel up and down the Klamath river.

The north side of the river is mostly prairie along the bank, and the old Indian trail is on that side. The whites took up the Indian trails and improved them so they were traveled by all. This old store is also the central ground for the lower Klamath Indians, as here close by is where they held the sacred White Deer-Skin Dance, which is a worship to their God. Here for ages past have gathered the wealthiest and most prominent Indians, both men and women of all the upper and lower Klamath tribe, including the Hoopa, Smith River and our Indians down the coast as far as Trinidad.

White men have visited this famous old store, whose names will go down in history, such as General Crook and many other army officers, besides many wealthy business men. All of them liked to linger in this beautiful spot where the sun shines warm and the pleasant sea breeze fans it all through the summer months. There is a trail to this place from the north, Crescent City, Reck-woy and other places. This is not a mining country as there are no mines below the mouth of the Trinity, except in the river gravel or in the low bars that have been washed down from the upper Klamath and Trinity rivers where all the rich gold-bearing mining placers are found. These mines were the cause of the old store being a central stopping place for the men in the early days, going to and from the mines. In the Fall of 1876 I counted upwards of three thousand Indians there at a White Deer-Skin dance. There were five different languages spoken among them, the lower Klamath, upper Klamath, Hoopa, Smith River and Mad River. Some of them could speak two and some three, while others could only speak one. So it can be seen that this old Klamath Bluff store or Klamath Post office as it is now called, has been the scene of many and not a few murders and this store will be mentioned often in my writing.

In about the year 1861 Snider sold the stock of goods to Bill McGarvey, a jolly Irishman. It was Bill McGarvey that named me Lucy, yet he always called me by my Indian name, Che-na-wah. Bill McGarvey kept in stock plenty of whiskey, always in the flat pint bottles, which he sold at a dollar a bottle to the whites and Indians alike. He would only bring out one bottle at a time in selling it to the Indians so that any time they became quarrelsome he could tell them that it was all gone. Bill McGarvey had many ups and downs in the way of his trading there among them and I will tell of some of his experiences.

Three Indians came to the store one day bringing with them a fine looking young Indian girl and wanted to borrow thirty dollars and leave the girl as security. He talked it over for awhile, the Indians saying that they had to have this amount to make a settlement with some other Indians, that they would come back and pay him and take the girl in thirty days. So he decided to let them have the money without due consideration of how he would take care of the girl. After they were gone he began to think of the situation that he had placed himself in, as he was a bachelor. So he made up a room for her and when it came to cooking he thought he would have her wash the dishes and sweep the house but she would do no house work unless he paid her for it. McGarvey tried to argue the case with her and told her that he had to furnish her food and cook it, also furnish a room and a bed to sleep in and that she ought to clean up the house. She answered by telling him that he was doing only what he had to do and that she would not work unless he paid her for it. McGarvey had to absolutely wait on her for the whole thirty days as completely as if she had owned him as a slave. She could go and come as she liked, always coming back in time so he could not make a complaint, telling him that if he said so, she would stay in the house all the time. He said that the experience was in after years a lesson to him in dealing with the Indians. When the thirty days were up they came with the money, paid him and took the girl.

Another time he wanted to get in his winter supplies and at that time he got his goods from Crescent City, (Caw-paw) and he went to Cortep village which is about six hundred yards above the store and on the same side of the river to see if he could hire them to go down the Klamath and out to sea to Crescent City with their canoes, as they had a large new one. He hired five of them, all Cortep Indians to go and bring his goods into the mouth of the river and store them there until they had them all in before the ocean would get too rough, as the winter months were coming on.

Early in the morning the five Indians of the Cortep village (this was a town village of the Klamath tribe) started down the river and on arriving at the mouth never stopped to take a view of the weather, but put out to sea. The ocean was very rough, the waves were rolling high, and when they got into the breakers their boat capsized and all five of them were drowned. This brought on serious trouble for Bill McGarvey. The relatives of the drowned Indians talked it over for three or four months and then decided to go to McGarvey and demand pay, the most of it to be paid in Indian money. McGarvey said that after counting it up it would amount in our gold to about fifteen hundred dollars. He refused to pay it, telling them that he was not responsible for the drowning, that he had only hired them to bring in his goods by water, that their getting drowned was not his fault and he would not pay. At this they went away.

Two or three days after, late in the evening he heard small stones striking on the shed-roof of the kitchen at the back part of the store. He listened, but heard no more, so he went to the door of the kitchen, enclosed with a high, strong picket fence, and opposite the kitchen door was a gate in this fence, and as he looked out of the door there stood a tall, slender fine looking Indian woman, one that had always been a friend of McGarvey, and not only to him but to all the whites. This woman was my close kindred which gave me the opportunity of knowing it correctly. She beckoned to McGarvey to come, and as he came up to her she told him to make preparations for himself and the other two men that were in the store to defend themselves as the Cortep Indians would be there very early the next morning and would kill him unless they could manage to hold the Indians off. Then the Indian woman stealthily crept away and back to her home while McGarvey and his two friends, Jack Paupaw and George A. White, began at once to prepare for their defence as well as they could. They got in as good a supply of water as they had vessels to hold it in, closed the doors and bolted them from the inside and opened the port-holes. Under the store was a large cellar just on a level with the ground from the outside. Sure enough, early the next morning there came twenty-five or thirty of them, with their faces blackened with war paint and yelling the war-hoop. But McGarvey and his friends were ready to keep them at bay for a few hours, until a young Indian that was a great friend of the whites and a life-long friend to McGarvey came and as he walked up to the door of the store he asked to be let in. They opened the door and let him in. This Indian, named So-pin-itts (Solomon), lived close by and is yet living. After he was in the store awhile he went out and talked it over with the Indians and called a stop till the next day, during which time McGarvey tried to make a settlement with them; and finally by telling them that it was too much money, that he never kept so much money in the store and that the only way he could pay that amount was to send to Crescent City and get his friends there to help him. Finally the Indians, consented to this and all of them went home. McGarvey wrote a letter to his friends in Crescent City asking them to help him, telling them of the situation he was in and asked them to intercede in his behalf or the three of them would be killed by the Indians. He also wrote a letter to the Government officer in command of the Smith River Indian Reservation, telling him of his predicament and asking him to send a squad of soldiers to his assistance, and then dispatched the letters by an Indian in post haste. The Indian, not knowing the contents of the letters, went with all speed to deliver them to the friend of McGarvey at Crescent City. The friend, after reading them, also made haste to deliver the one to the commanding officer, while the officer in turn arranged to send ten soldiers with an officer to the McGarvey store. They arrived at the store on the morning of the fifth day after the truce had been given. At daylight the soldiers came down the hill to the north of the store, whooping and yelling at the top of their voices, after a long and tedious march of almost day and night over rough mountain trails, up hill and down, through brush and timber with only part of the distance in the open ground, traveling for about fifty hours.

On the arrival of the soldiers the Indians were dismayed, knowing that they had been out-generaled and that McGarvey had sent for the soldiers instead of sending for the money to pay them, and had done it by sending one of their own men to deliver the message. At this turn of affairs the Indians quieted down and abided their time, as they never get in a hurry to make a settlement.

After the soldiers had been there for a few days they received orders to remain until further notice. It was then that McGarvey hired some men to build an addition to the store. This was erected at the west end of the store, about twelve feet wide and eighteen feet long and eight feet high to the eaves. It stood out over a steep bank of a small creek that comes down close to the west end of the store. This made comfortable quarters for the soldiers where they would be sheltered from the hot rays of the summer heat and the rains of the winter months, also privacy from the prying eyes of the inquisitive Indians. Here the soldiers remained for about eight months, having all sorts of a jolly time, as Bill McGarvey had plenty of whiskey to supply their thirst at a dollar a bottle after each pay day. McGarvey on some occasions would take quite freely of the whiskey himself, becoming intoxicated and boisterous. On these occasions his friend Solomon, the Indian, would go into the store and keep him straight, locking the doors and letting no one in.

Jack Paupaw and George White went to their own homes. Jack Paupaw was a blacksmith by trade and was working in Crescent City. He was an old pioneer of Crescent City and the Klamath river. He returned to Crescent City while White went up the river to a place known as Big Bar, thus leaving McGarvey with the soldiers, as everything was now quiet. Things proceeded smoothly while the soldiers were there and all thought that the trouble was forgiven and forgotten and the soldiers were ordered back to their command.

But the Indians of the Cortep village began to scheme for another plan for revenge of their lost relatives, but gave up McGarvey and chose this time a man by the name of Bryson who was the superintendent of the Klamath Bluffs Mine, situated only about two hundred yards up the river from the store. Bryson had a miner’s cabin which he lived in while working at the mines, up from the river out of the way of high water. The mine was down close to the river. He was coming up the trail to his cabin for dinner just about twelve o’clock when one of the Cortep Indians shot him down in his tracks with one of the old muzzle loading rifles; this Indian was named Lotch-kum. Then all the Indians left for the timber to get out of the way of the whites and friendly Indians. This started the row going again and McGarvey barricaded his store until the friendly Indians came to his assistance. The first family to come was Weitch-ah-wah (my father) and his brother (my uncle).

At that time they were camped at the mouth of Tec-tah creek, some four miles down the river from the store, and as soon as they heard of the killing of Bryson they started for their home at the Pec-wan village about one mile above the store and on going home went by the store and stopped to learn the particulars of the killing. McGarvey made arrangements with Warrots (my uncle) to go up the river and give notice to the whites, T. M. Brown, the Sheriff of Klamath County, and to the soldiers stationed at Camp Gaston in Hoopa Valley, some twelve miles up the Trinity river from its junction with the Klamath. After Warrots had delivered the message at all points he stealthily returned to his home at Pec-wan in the night so the other Indians would not find out he was on this errand against them. On the day following Warrots’s return, the Sheriff and other white men came among them. George A. White, who was a cripple as has before been stated, started to walk on the front porch of the store when some of the angry Indians said to him, Melasses White you can’t fight, you are crippled (Melasses was his Indian name).

White went back into the store and got one of the first makes of Henry rifles. (The one Warrots had let McGarvey have to defend himself with, and was the one my brother had brought from Oregon while he was up there with the white men and was the only one to be found on the Klamath of the kind and make at that time). As soon as the Cortep Indians saw the rifle they knew at once that Warrots had given it to the whites to shoot them with and it caused them to swear vengeance against Warrots and his brother. Upon further inquiry they also found out that Warrots had been up to Hoopa and told of the killing of Bryson. T. M. Brown having been the Sheriff of Klamath County a number of years and also a pioneer of the Klamath river was quite well acquainted with the habits and customs of the Klamath river Indians and he counseled with the friendly Indians and agreed to pay them for their services if they would bring in the guilty Indian Lotch-kum dead or alive. So Warrots set out to find Lotch-kum and kept watching different places to find where he was hiding. The country being heavily timbered Lotch-kum kept out of sight for nearly a year but at last Warrots found where he was hiding in a creek some eight miles down the river from the store and about one mile up the creek from the river in the heavy redwood timber, in a large pile of drift logs. He first heard Lotch-kum’s little fist dog bark and on watching patiently for awhile saw Lotch-kum come out. At this he went back to his home in the Pec-wan village, then visited with the Ser-e-goin village and told them that he had found the hiding place of Lotch-kum. When they got ready three of them, the other two being from the Ser-e-goin village, Monmonth Jack and Marechus Charley, with Warrots leading the way arrived close to Lotch-kum’s hiding place. They commenced to keep a close lookout for him, as they could see his tracks in the soft dirt and sand in the bed of the creek; and had to keep up the watch for about ten days. Finally they saw him come creeping out to the creek where he began to bathe himself. Warrots raised his rifle to his shoulder, took aim and fired, Charley and Jack firing next. Lotch-kum fell to the ground but kept raising up and falling down again, trying to get away, when the three of them ran up to him as fast as they could, drew their long heavy knives and severed his head, put it in a sack and carried it back to the old store in triumph. Inside they rolled it out on the counter, which satisfied the whites for the killing of Bryson. Bryson was buried in a pretty spot a little north-east of the store, with hardly a mark to show the place where he was to sleep, and all settled down to peace and quietness again between the Indians and the whites. But the Pec-wan Indians were divided between the Indians and the whites, some of them were friendly to the whites while others took sides with the Cortep Indians. Warrots was a Pec-wan Indian and full brother to Weitch-ah-wah. The Sheriff and Government officers gave to the three Indians who had killed Lotch-kum, letters of very high recommendations for their services and to the good graces of all the whites. (I have seen these letters with the signatures many times in my girl-hood days.)

Now the Cortep village and part of the Pec-wan village began to make plans to kill Warrots, and as he was considered to be a good and faithful friend of the whites by these Indians, it must be done in a way so as to deceive the whites and not to let them know it was being done as a revenge for the part he had taken in killing Lotch-kum. So they bided their time waiting for a good chance, but all the time Warrots was hearing of their schemes through his friends and he went to the Sheriff and Government officers and told them that Lotch-kum’s friends were planning to kill him and all of them promised him that no one would be allowed to harm him. Sheriff Brown sent him word to meet him at Trinidad as Trinidad was at that time in Klamath County. Warrots came and laid the facts before him and the Sheriff promised him protection and Warrots went back home. After about three weeks his brother Weitch-ah-wah and all the family except myself (I was about eight years of age) went away, thereby Warrots’s enemies got their chance to carry out their plans. Early in the morning Warrots went down to the creek which was only a short distance, to bathe and there he met a little boy, the son of Pec-wan Ma-hatch-us. He spoke to the boy, bathed in the creek and went back up to the house, when he saw another Indian coming up the river trail from the Cortep village, and as he passed the boy Warrots saw him stop, talk to the boy and give him a piece of bread which he ate. The boy then came up to the Pec-wan village while the Indian, who was from the Cortep village, kept on up the river. As the boy got to his house he became ill and in about thirty minutes died. Evidently the Indian had given him a piece of poisoned bread which had killed him. They gave no attention to the one that gave the bread but instead laid all the blame on Warrots for the death of the boy and as soon as the ceremony and burial was over they pounced upon Warrots and shot him at the door of his sweat-house, killing him. The next day Warrots was laid to rest in the grave-yard of his own folks in Pec-wan village. None of the whites ever made any attempt to punish any of the Indians or stop them from killing him. This is the reward he received for being a faithful friend to the whites in times of need. His brother with his family was forced to leave their home in Pec-wan village and move to Ser-e-goin village, where lived the friends and helpers of Warrots, Mermis Jack and Ser-e-goin Charley. After living there for awhile we moved up to Hoopa so as to get farther away from our enemies and where we could have a better chance for protection. I took a position with the Agent which they said I filled with credit to myself and satisfaction to them. Mermis Jack and Ser-e-goin Charley lived for many years but were never friendly with the friends of Lotch-kum. Mermis Jack finally died suddenly and in a manner that pointed strongly that he was given poison in his food. Ser-e-goin Charley died a natural death in 1886.

In 1876 Bill McGarvey died in the old store that went by his name so long. He had not been feeling well for some time. In the large room at the west end of the store building he had a large stone fire-place, put in many years before and he used this room as his bed-room and also a sitting room. In this room he was taking his bath in a tub when he fell over dead in front of the fire-place. The same evening his Indian lady friend died in her home which was just a short distance from the store. McGarvey had outside shutters to his windows which fastened from the inside and these he had fastened, and in the morning as he did not open the store, his Indian friend Solomon waited until late in the morning for the opening of the store, when he became suspicious of all not being right. He pried open the shutter of the window on the south side of the store which would give him a view of everything in the room where McGarvey slept, and there before the large stone fire-place lay McGarvey cold in death and beside him was the tub in which he was taking his bath. When the Indians heard of his death they all said Bill McGarvey and Mollie have both gone over to the other side together. (Mollie was closely related to all my folks.) Bill McGarvey was laid to rest by the side of Bryson, on the flat above the store, and the store passed into the hands of James McGarvey, a brother of Bill. James McGarvey made the claim that he was the only living brother which was afterwards said to be false, yet he got the store and ran it for several years. He kept whiskey and sold it to the Indians and the whites. The Indians would get drunk and have fights and kill each other until he finally got mixed up with them by having a row over one Indian finding a pistol in the trail that belonged to a white man by name of Jim Douglas. McGarvey thought he would make the Indian give up the pistol in short order and he went into the Wah-tec village which is situated but a short distance from the store and as he got within a few yards of Ray-no, the Indian, he drew his pistol and commenced to shoot at him. McGarvey’s shots went wild and the Indian drew his pistol and shot McGarvey, striking him in the back on the left side, just missing the back-bone and went clean through the body on the striffin of his stomach and he fell to the ground. The white men went to his assistance and carried him to the store and the Indians that were in the row left and went up the river to other villages with the pistol in their possession. This raised quite a furor of excitement and the whites were counseled with by the Indians that were friendly to both sides and they were asked to bring back the ones that were in the shooting of McGarvey and to bring back the pistol to the rightful owner. The next day they came back and returned the pistol to James Douglas and he gave them five dollars to be given to the one that found it. In some three weeks Jim McGarvey was up and walking around and in a short time went to Orleans Bar, where there was a Justice of the Peace and tried to swear out a warrant for the arrest of the Indian but the warrant was refused by the Justice who told him that he had commenced the row himself by shooting first, while intoxicated. Several years before this, Klamath County was taken off the map by being absorbed into Humboldt and Del Norte Counties, leaving this old Klamath Bluffs store in Humboldt County.

Jim McGarvey was selling whiskey to the Indians and causing so much trouble among them that it caused a number of killing scrapes. After this trouble was settled and Jim McGarvey got well of his wounds, he sold the store to Peter Kane and moved down the Klamath River to within about three miles of the mouth of the river and settled at the mouth of a small creek close to the bank of the river, taking with him all of his ill gotten gains and his beautiful little Indian woman that had lived with him for years and to whom he had never been married by any law. She was neat and tidy and a good cook but McGarvey got mad at her for crying over the death of her mother and struck her on the back of her head. From this she began to lose her mind and he finally abandoned her and she became a raving maniac and died, leaving no children. Her body was taken back up to her birthplace and laid to rest with her kin in the family grave-yard, while Jim McGarvey lived on his place for a few years and then died.

Peter Kane now had the store and he also kept whiskey and a rough house. He would sell whiskey to the Indians and get drunk himself, having trouble all around. He said one fall that he had two five gallon kegs of whiskey and that the Indians close around there had four hundred dollars and that he would get it all out of them for the two kegs of whiskey. His selling to them was the cause of four of them getting killed. Peter Kane had an Indian woman belonging to Redwood creek. She spoke the Hoopa tongue and bore him three children. One day one of the little girls about seven months old was crying and Kane grabbed her roughly by the neck, held her out, shook her at the same time, he walked out through the kitchen and threw the child flat on the ground with its face down, then turned and walked back into and store cursing the child and its mother. The next morning the mother got her things together and started for her home on Redwood creek. Arriving at the Klamath river which she had to cross she proceeded to cross over with her children and had almost reached the other side before Kane found that she was leaving. As soon as he discovered that she was going he ran into the store, grabbed his rifle and ran down the bank to the water’s edge and began firing. He fired several shots at her, the bullets striking close by but failing to strike her. She went to her home in the night, some twenty miles away, over a rough mountain trail and through heavy timber most of the way. She never came back. The Indians preventing him from following her that night was all that kept him from killing her. It got too warm for him and he sold the store to C. H. Johnson and afterwards went to the Indian woman on Redwood creek and remained there with her. This brute took the same little girl by her legs and dashed her brains out against a large redwood post, so every one said. The woman again had to flee for her life. She left for Hoopa Valley, where she could get some protection and Kane did not dare to follow her there. He drifted down on the coast and lived for a number of years but finally took sick and died in the County Hospital. The woman he had lived with and bore him children remained at Hoopa and raised the other children. Can you expect children, born to such fathers under such conditions to grow up to be good and respectable men and women? Many of them are a credit to their Indian mothers while those who have good respectable fathers and are born under wed-lock, having a birth that they can be proud of, over the average, make the best of men and women.

I have strenuously fought the whiskey traffic carried on by the unprincipled white men for years and did all that I could to stop it, and made bitter enemies in doing so. Yet it is going on just the same under the very eyes of some of those who are employed by the U. S. Government to put it down. It looks as if they were paid to keep their eyes closed and not see it.

When C. H. Johnson took over the store he cleaned it up and built an addition to it and put in a large stock of provisions, made friends with the Indians and did not keep any intoxicating liquors and he allowed no one to drink around the store. He gave the Indians good advice so that all looked up to him as a friend among them and he never meddled with any of their wives but treated them with respect, so that all could come and go, trade and chat with perfect ease and freedom. Many of them would lay their troubles before him and he would listen patiently and always try to give them good advice and keep down trouble among them as far as it was in his power to do so. Mr. Johnson kept this store for over twenty-five years and the Indians never at any time made a threat against him or offered to harm him in any way. He began with the help of the settlers and succeeded in getting the government to establish a post office at the store and which he named Klamath Post office, while he was the Postmaster. He ran the Post office with the store and made a good official, striving at all times to do what he could for the patrons of the office. It was very few times that any complaint was made for mislaying mail. He ran the Post office for about twenty-two years and during this time many of the Indians sent letters and received others and he used to read their letters for them and did much of their correspondence for them. He kept the office until he died. Mr. Johnson used to keep quite a stock of patent medicines and acted as doctor to the Indians if any of them were sick, often going to see them and give them medicine if he thought by doing so he could cure them. In serious cases he would advise them to go to a white doctor which they would sometimes do.

As Mr. Johnson never kept any whiskey, being opposed to selling it to the Indians, his neighbors now took advantage of the whiskey business and began to get it in quantities and sell it to the Indians and mixed bloods which still kept the quarrels going. It looks as if it will still continue so to the end. It is a well known fact that Mr. Johnson made money at the store and when he became sick he was attended by white men until he died. It was said that no money was found above a small sum. The stock of goods was run down until there was but little left. The reader can guess how this happened as Mr. Johnson never made a failure and always paid for his goods, his credit being good for whatever he ordered. He was the father of one daughter, her mother being a Klamath Indian woman. This daughter he always claimed as his child and made arrangements for her to have all he possessed at his death, but she will never get but little. He was buried upon the flat beside the grave of Mr. Bryson in a deplorable manner.

A man by the name of Oscar Chapman, after the lapse of several weeks was sent up to take charge of the store until the estate could be settled. The Post office was moved from the store and Chapman continued to run the store about one year and kept whiskey to sell and ran gambling tables in the store. He meddled with the women, both married and single for which he was shot dead in ambush. The Coroner was sent up from Arcata to take charge of the body and brought it down to Arcata for burial.

Then a man named William Lawson was sent up there to take charge of the store and remained a few months and would not stay any longer. The order was given to him to sell all he could and box up the remainder and take what was left down to the mouth of the Klamath by boat and store it there for safe keeping until some future time. Thus, the old store at Klamath Bluffs is dismantled and now stands there unoccupied.

After the death of Mr. Johnson the Government put two lady matrons on the Klamath river to look after the interests of the Indians. They at once began to look after this store and made reports against it. The order came that no one could buy it or start it up as a trading post without first giving a bond in the sum of ten thousand dollars, yet it had been run by different men, sold a number of times and none had ever given any bonds for over fifty years.

Around this store there are many tales woven, and I will tell quite a number of them, using this place as a center to start with, as this is where the lower Klamath Indians have their White Deer-Skin dance and a short distance above the store is where one of their sacred lodges is located. They have the true name of God which is used in the lodge only in a low whisper, and outside of the lodge when three or four of them are out in a secret place, and then only in a whisper when they are burning certain roots and herbs that give sweet and pleasant odors to their God. While the festival is being held all difficulties are settled. Those of lower birth at the present time are pretending to carry out the worship, but for the past few years have made a sorry affair of it.

MARRIAGE

In the high marriage of the Talth the woman is most beautifully dressed on her wedding day. A buck-skin dress all strung with beads and shells that clink and rattle with her ever graceful step. Her hair is parted in the middle, brought down on each side and rolled with the skin of the otter. This skin is nicely dressed or tanned and then cut into about one inch strips, thus holding the hair so it hangs down to their hips or lower, according to its length. Around her neck are strings of most beautifully arranged beads and of high value among them; they hang down to her waist, almost completely covering her chest. A buck skin, dressed and made as white as it can be made, goes over the shoulders and fastens around the neck and hangs down covering the back. This makes her very beautiful. She is so quick in movement that one has to keep their eyes on her closely to see all of her actions, while she speaks low and softly. These high marriages are very few and this beautiful sight of the bride is seldom seen. The girls born of these marriages were always looked up to by the Indians. When these girls came along or were met by any children of other births, the latter would always get out of the trail and let them pass.

The Klamath Indians never had a chief like the other large tribes but were ruled by these men and women of such births that became members of the order.

Another system is the “half married” one, the woman taking her husband to her house to live with her. By this marriage she is the absolute boss of the man and has complete control of all the children. She has the power to correct her husband in all his actions and can send him out to hunt, fish or work just as she deems proper, he being a slave to her, as they usually both belong to the class that are slaves. It amuses one to hear them use the term against white men that marry white women, the man having no home of his own, and the woman taking him to her home. They say that white man is half married just the same as our people are half married and that the white man can not walk out at any time as he is not boss for the woman owns everything. They have a third form of marriage that belongs to the middle class. These marriages are considered by the whole tribe as good marriages and the children born by these marriages have a good standing in all walks of life. The marriage is performed by a part barter and trade, such as giving in exchange a boat or fishing place or any other property of a personal nature. This ceremony is more of the common than the imposing way. Since the coming of the white man he has brought this marriage around to a simple form of buying outright by giving a price as one would for a horse, cow or any other purchase. The old Indian law was an exchange of valuable articles and often the woman did not go to the man she married and live with him in his own home until they had been married one, two or three years.

The Klamath Indians were, at the coming of the white man, a very large tribe, there being several thousand of them. It taxed every resource of the country in which they lived for all of them to obtain a subsistence, therefore everything was owned in the same way that it is now owned by the white man. The land was divided up by the boundaries of the creeks, ridges and the river. All open prairies for gathering grass seeds, such as Indian wheat, which looks similar to rye, besides other kinds of seed; the oak timber for gathering acorns, the sugar pine for gathering pine nuts, the hazel flats for gathering hazel nuts and the fishing places for catching salmon.

The most frugal and saving of the families had become the owners of these places and their ownership undisputed and these ownerships were handed down from one generation to another by will. In time this left a great many of them owning no property by which they could make a living and many of their own people became slaves to the wealthy class. They made the slaves work and kept them from starving, and by this there came about the “half married” system. There are some of these Indians that were born slaves living yet, and they are the ones that are always ready to tell the white man all of the Indian legends in a way to fit their own cases. They cannot tell the true legends at all, as they are ignorant of such facts. The wealthy ones would see that the men got wives and that the girls got husbands, build them houses and some families were very kind to their slaves. When they were sick they saw that they had doctors and the proper care. Some families were mean and over-bearing to their slaves, giving no care to the sick, letting them die and going so far as to throw them into a hole, leaving them there to suffer and starve until they died. This sort of treatment was looked down upon by the ones that had better humane feelings and they sometimes prevented such inhuman actions. The most of the doctors are women and they exercised great power, especially those who had a high standing as to family, and the art of curing most all diseases or cases of sickness. A few of the doctors were men and they used roots and herbs of different kinds and they are hard to beat as doctors in a great many kinds of sickness. They can cure the bite of a rattle snake, not one of them ever dying from the bite. I knew many of the people that were bitten by the rattle snake at different times and they were cured and lived to be very old. For this cure they use salt water out of the ocean and the root or the onion of what you call kelp and which is taken out of the ocean. They pound the onion of the kelp and make a poultice out of it, place it over the wound and keep it wet with the salt water, at the same time letting the patient drink all he can of the salt water. The patient is kept perfectly still and not allowed to move about more than is necessary. They bind the limb or place where the part is bitten to prevent the free circulation of the blood through these parts.

In other things they are equally as good. In child-birth they prepare a woman for giving birth to her child and at the birth of the child they have an old woman to take care of the mother and child. After the birth of the child the cord is cut and tied, then they take the black part of a large snail, which has an oily substance, and place it over the navel. They put a bandage around the child which is kept there for some time. I have never known an Indian of the old tribe to be ruptured and yet they do not know anything about surgery. If anything of a serious nature happens to a woman during child-birth they are at a loss to know what to do to save her. If the woman gives birth to twins and they are a boy and girl, they try to raise them both, but if it be two boys or girls they pick one of them and raise it while the other one is neglected and starved to death, and when it died they went through all the forms of sorrow by crying and mourning over the loss of the child just the same as if they tried to raise it. If anything happens to the mother that causes her death at child-birth or after and the child is yet an infant, they take sugar-pine nuts or hazel nuts and pound them into fine flower and mix this in warm water, making a milky substance out of it. They can raise a child on this preparation as well as if it was nursed at the mother’s breast. Every family in the olden times was very careful to keep a good supply of pine and hazel nuts on hand.

The Indians were preservers of the sugar-pine timber which grew on the high ranges of mountains on the north side of the river and there was a very heavy fine and also death to the Indian that willfully destroyed any of this timber. The sugar from these trees was also used by them as a medicine in different cases of sickness. The salt water mussels that they gather which cling to the rocks close to the sea-shore, is an article of food for them and they gather and eat them while fresh by boiling them. They also dry them and take them up the river to their homes for winter use. In the month of August and a part of September these mussels become poisoned, in some years worse than in others, with phosphorus. Sometimes whole families would get poisoned by eating them out of season and in this case they use the sugar which is taken from the sugar-pine tree and which is a sure cure if taken in time. This made the Indian prize the sugar-pine tree very highly and putting to death even a member of their own tribe who harmed a tree in any way.

In the early days when a white man arrived among the Indians, he took an Indian woman, and in the fall of the year she would want to gather some pine nuts, the white man would go with her, taking his axe, and cut down the tree, as he could not climb it, and told the woman there they are, what are you going to do about it? At first the woman complained and finally said that the white man would spoil everything. Then the Indians began to cut the trees. In the last few years these trees have become very valuable in the eyes of the white man, and it has become the complaint of the white man that the Indians ought to be arrested and punished. Some of them have gone so far as to say that the Indians ought to be shot for cutting down this fine timber for the nuts. I leave the reader to decide which one ought to be punished for the cutting of the great number of these fine sugar-pine trees.

The Indians also took the greatest of care of the hazel nut flats as the nuts are used in many ways. The nuts were gathered and stored away as they could be kept for a long time and could be pounded into flour, put into warm water and made a good substitute for milk which could be used for weak, sickly children, also in some cases for sick persons that needed nourishment and had weak stomachs. The hazel is used in all of their basket making, as the frame of all the baskets are made of the hazel sticks. In taking care of the hazel flats they got out in the dry summer or early in the fall months and burn the hazel brush, then the next spring the young shoots started up from the old roots. On the following spring in the month of May, when the sap rises and the shoots start to grow, the women go forth and gather these young shoots which are from one to two feet in length. Some of these sticks grow up to a height of three feet and are gathered for making the large baskets and also the wood baskets. They gather these sticks by the thousands and take them home where the women, children and men all join in peeling the bark off the sticks. They take up a handful in the right hand, then place the butt end of one of them in their mouth, taking hold of it with their teeth and the left hand, giving it a twist so as to peel the bark around the end, and as they get the bark started they give the stick one quick jerk and the bark peels off at one effort. After they are peeled they are laid out in the sun, on a smooth place, in thin layers and allowed to bleach and dry and when they are dried they gather them up and assort them out according to their size and length, and tie the different sizes in bundles and lay them away for use, sometimes three or four years later, before they are made up into baskets. The small sticks are used for making up the very fine baskets. The reader can easily see by this why the hazel was preserved and not destroyed as it had a great value to them in many ways. They made withes of it for tying their boats and other things. The oak timber they were very careful to preserve as they gathered the acorns from it late in the fall, October and November. The oak tree furnished them with the staff of life, as it was from the acorn they made all their bread and mush and this bread they could take for use on long journeys on their hunting trips. They would wrap up a large lump of dough and placing it in a cool place, keep it for several days before it would begin to spoil or sour. From this dough they made their mush by taking a piece about the size of a tea cup and put it into one of the baskets, fill it nearly full with water, then take some wash stones taken from the river or creek and put them in the fire until they were hot and often red-hot when they would take two sticks and lift them out, drop them into the basket and stir the whole briskly with a paddle, made for this purpose, they would soon have it boiling and by putting in another stone and with a little more stirring they would soon have the basket of mush cooked. They call this mush Ka-go and it is very nutritious and gives great power of endurance. After the basket of mush has been set aside for thirty or forty minutes it is then dipped out into small baskets made for the purpose and of size to fit the stomach. One person serves, handing out the mush together with a piece of dry salmon or venison or different things that may be prepared for eating. The acorn furnishes the bread to all the Klamath river Indians.

All the oak timber was owned by the well-to-do families and was divided off by lines and boundaries as carefully as the whites have got it surveyed today. It can easily be seen by this that the Indians have carefully preserved the oak timber and have never at any time destroyed it.

The Douglas fir timber they say has always encroached on the open prairies and crowded out the other timber, therefore they have continuously burned it and have done all they could to keep it from covering all the open lands. Our legends tell when they arrived in the Klamath river country that there were thousands of acres of prairie lands and with all the burning that they could do the country has been growing up to timber more and more.