At Klamath I hired for my assistant a man named George Loosely. I also bought two saddle ponies and one to carry the pack; and with a government tent and other outfit and rations purchased at the commissary,—we had our flour baked into bread by the post baker,—we started for Silver Lake, although no one at the post could give us any directions. I had a department map, sent to me by Professor Cope, which recorded, mistakenly as we found later, that Sprague River rose in Silver Lake. The government road to the east crossed the Williamson River on a government bridge, and came to an abrupt end in an Indian village on the western bank of Sprague River. So we decided to take the road as far as we could and then follow up the river to its source in the lake.
When we reached the Williamson River, we found there the lodge of a Snake Indian, who appeared dressed in red paint and a breech-cloth, and demanded toll. But as American citizens we had paid taxes to help pay for that bridge; so we refused to pay toll for the use of our own property, and rode across in spite of the threats hurled at us.
We reached Sprague River that same evening, and went into camp a short distance from a large Indian town. The houses, built by government contractors of rough logs, consisted of a single room with a shake roof. The Indians had torn out the board floors, and instead of using the fireplaces and chimneys which the builders had erected for their convenience, they had cut holes in the roofs, and built their fires in the middle of the floor, sleeping around them at night as their fathers used to do in their lodges or Sibley tents.
George, who was more familiar with them than I was, learned that a chief lay dying in one of the houses, and after supper he left me and went to witness the death ceremonies. After stowing away the bread and coffee between our mattresses and covering them with blankets, and hiding the bacon at the bottom of the mess box with tin dishes piled on top of it so that I should hear the rattle if a thieving Indian attempted to get at it, I, being tired, dropped off to sleep.
About three o’clock in the morning, George appeared, having been shut up in the house with the dying chief all night. When the medicine man began his incantations, the doors and windows were closed, while the steaming Indians danced in a circle around the dying chief, forcing the unwilling George to take part in the ceremonies. All night long they moved around in their death dance to the music of their drums and the wild gesticulations of the medicine man, and when George finally got away, he was about exhausted. He was soon lost in sleep, and as I habitually lie on my sound ear, neither of us heard anything through the night. But the next morning, when George had put on the coffee to boil and went into the mess box for the bacon, it had disappeared. The dishes had been carefully replaced.