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J. A. Graves - Out of Doors - California and Oregon
experience? Life in the open, the change of air, the excitement of hunting, all united in sweeping the
cobwebs from our brains and left us better prepared for the battle of life than we were before we started.
Professor "Lo," Philosopher
My Interview with an Educated Indian in the Wilds of Oregon:
In the summer of 1902 I was camping, in company with the late Judge Sterry of Los Angeles, on Spring
Creek in the Klamath Indian Reservation in Southeast Oregon. Spring Creek rises out, of lava rocks and
flows in a southeasterly direction, carrying over 200,000 inches of the clearest, coldest water I ever saw.
In fact, its waters are so clear that the best anglers can only catch trout, with which the stream abounds,
in riffles, that is where the stream runs over rocks of such size as to keep the surface in constant
commotion, thus obscuring the vision of the fish.
Two miles, or thereabouts, from its source, Spring Creek empties into the Williamson River. The
Williamson rises miles away in a tule swamp, and its waters are as black as black coffee. Where the two
streams come together, the dark waters of the Williamson stay on the left hand side of the stream, going
down, and the clear waters of Spring Creek on the right hand side, for half a mile or more. Here some
rapids, formed by a swift declivity of the stream, over sunken boulders, cause a mixup of the light and
dark waters, and from there on they flow intermingled and indistinguishable.
Nine miles down stream, the Sprague River comes in from the left. It is as large as the Williamson, and
its waters are the color of milk, or nearly so. The stream flows for miles over chalk beds and through
chalk cliffs, which gives its waters their weird coloring. The union of the waters of the Williamson and
the Sprague Rivers results in the dirty, gray coloring of the waters of Klamath Lake, into which they
empty, and of the Klamath River, which discharges the lake into the Pacific Ocean.
Killican.
The place where the Williamson is joined by the Sprague is known as the "Killican." The stream here
flows over a lava bottom and is quite wide, in places very deep and in places quite shallow. There
seemed to be quite an area of this shallow water. The shallow places suddenly dropped off into pools of
great depth, and it was something of a stunt to wander around on the shallow bed rock and cast off into
the pools below. I tried it and found the lava as smooth and slippery as polished glass.
After sitting down a couple of times in water two feet deep, I concluded to stay on shore and cast out into
the pool. Following this exhilarating exercise with indifferent success, I noticed approaching a little, old
Indian. He was bareheaded and barefooted. His shirt was open, exposing his throat and breast. His eyes
were deep set, his hair and beard a grizzly gray. He had a willow fishing pole in one hand and a short
bush with green leaves on it, with which he was whacking grasshoppers, in the other. He circled around
on the bank near me, now and again catching a hopper. I noticed that he ate about two out of every five
that he caught. The others he kept for bait.
Finally he approached the stream. He paid no attention whatever to me. He selected a spot almost under
me, squatted down upon a flat rock, put two grasshoppers on his hook, threw it into the stream, and in a
very short time drew out a good six-pound trout. Filled with admiration for the feat, while he was tying a
string through the fish's gills I said to him, "Muy mahe," which another Indian had told me meant "big
trout." Without looking up or turning his head, he said to me in perfect English, "What sort of lingo are
you giving me, young man? The true pronunciation of those words is," and then he repeated "Muy
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