About sixty years ago there lived a girl in the Cor-tep village by the
name of Mee-cher-us-o-may, and her parents urged her to marry a young
man who lived farther up the river at the village of Mor-eck. (I have
forgotten his name.) The girl did not like the man, yet her parents
kept urging her to marry him against her will. There was two of her
girl friends that was going down the river to Reck-woy, so she got
into the boat or Indian canoe with them and started down the river. As
they glided along Mee-cher-us-o-may kept wishing that some wild animal
would take her, kill her and eat her. When they got to a place called
Hay-way-gaw they all camped out on the bank of the river, back some
twenty yards or more from the waters edge. The canoe was pulled up on
the sloping sand so as to make it safe for the night, then they made a
fire, cooked their evening meal and then talked until it was time to
go to bed. All this time Mee-cher-us-o-may was wishing some harm would
come to her. The three girls made their bed for the night so that all
three could sleep together and when they went to bed Mee-cher-us-o-may
slept in the center, so all went to sleep. In the morning she was
missing, she got her wish. She had been taken from between the other
two girls, and on examination they could see very plainly where a wild
animal had dragged her over the dry sand, down to the edge of the
water, into the river and disappeared with her, and she was never seen
again. They thought an animal of the leopard species took her as some
of the animals have been seen a number of times on the lower Klamath,
and the Indians are very much afraid of them. This happened when I was
a little girl.
CHAPTER XXXI.
OUR TOBACCO.
The white race of people that the Klamath Indians found in this land
had a weed they called tobacco, which we call Hah-koom, and taught them
to use it by smoking it in the pipe and to cultivate it by selecting a
proper place, pile brush over the ground and then burn it, which would
leave the ground with a loose layer of wood ashes. Over this, while the
ashes were yet dry and loose, they would sow the seed and protect the
crop by putting around it a brush fence. From year to year they would
select from the best stalks seed for the next year and at times to hold
the seed for a number of years if necessary, for if kept properly it
will grow after being kept for a long time. The only thing that will
bother or destroy the crop of tobacco is the deer and they often jump
over the brush fence and eat every part of the crop, even to the roots.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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