The doctor is a native of the mountains, and boasts that he is “no emigrant or carpet-bagger either;”—that his father’s blood was mixed with Puritan stock from Boston, and his mother knew how to lash him to the baby board and swing him to her back with strong cords, while she promenaded behind her husband, or gathered the wild huckleberries.
He is now, 1874, en route for the east with a troupe of Indians from Warm Springs and the Modoc Lava Beds.
Few who meet him will suspect he is the one of whom I write, unless I describe him more accurately. Educated in Wilbraham, Mass., at his father’s expense, he graduated with honor, and returned to his native land a strong, well-built, handsome gentleman. He married a woman of his own blood, fully his equal in culture.
The doctor has taken part in nearly all the important Indian affairs of Oregon and Washington Territory for a quarter of a century; sometimes as interpreter or secretary for treaty councils, and sometimes as United States Resident Physician, and again as leader of friendly Indians against hostile ones. His experiences have more the character of romance than any man in the northwest.
He meets us at the wharf and says, “Come, you are my guest,” and leads the way to the high, rocky
bluffs overlooking the city of “The Dalles.” Our entertainment was made complete through the hospitality of the lady-like, dark-eyed woman who presided at a table whereon we found an elegant supper.
We light our pipes, and stroll out to the tents of the teamsters, packers, and hands who are to accompany our expedition. An Indian boy is baking bread by a camp-fire with frying-pans. Near by the door of the cooking-tent we see our kitchen, a chest or box,—and by its side stands a fifty-pound sack of self-rising flour, with the end open, and, resting on the flour, a lump of dough.
Jimmy Kane, the Indian cook, twists off a chunk, and, by a circling motion peculiar to himself, and one would say entirely original, he soon gives it the shape of a thin, unbaked loaf. See the fellow measuring the frying-pan with his eyes, first scanning the loaf and then the pan, until, in his judgment, they will fit each other well; then, holding the limp loaf in his left hand, with the other he slips a bacon rind over the inside of the pan, to prevent the dough from sticking, and claps the latter in; and, patting it down until the surface is smooth, he pulls from his belt a sheath-knife, and makes crosses in the cake to prevent blistering. Next, the frying-pan goes over the fire a moment or two until the bottom is crusted. Meantime the cook has drawn out coals or embers, standing the pan at an angle, and propping it in position with a small stick, with one end in the ground and the other in the upper end of the pan-handle. Meanwhile the coffee-pot is boiling, and in some other frying-pan the meats are cooking. But see that mess
of dough, how it swells and puffs up, like an angry mule making ready for a bucking frolic. Jimmy takes the pan by the handle, and, with a peculiar motion, sends the now steaming loaf round and round the pan; then jerking a straw or reed from the ground, thrusts it into the heart of the loaf, and, quickly withdrawing it, examines the heated point. If no dough is there, the loaf is “done,” and then Jimmy throws it on his hand, and keeps it dancing until he lands it in the bread-sack, which is stored away among bed-blankets to keep it hot; while he proceeds to put another lump of dough through the same process. Sometimes the first loaf may be stood on end before the fire while the other loaves are taking their turn in the pan.
Perhaps a dozen cakes are standing like plates in a country woman’s cupboard, all on edge, while we look at the Indian cook setting the table on the ground. First spreading down a saddle-blanket, and then a table of thick sail-cloth, he draws the kitchen near, and pitches the tin plates and cups, knives, and spoons around, and, placing an old sack in the centre, sets thereon the frying-pan full of hot “fryins.” But Jimmy has everything on the table, and is waiting for the boys to come.