He-na Tom’s brother-in-law was afterwards killed, and all of his Klamath relations were compelled to leave the Klamath River, and go to Smith River to live for a number of years before they dared to return to the Klamath again. I have long since found that the Klamath Indians are bad fellows, for any one to try to play fake on. They have, or used to have, their wise ones, that watched the different positions of the planets, at different seasons of the year, and tell of hard winters, of cold or warm summers, and of different harvest famines. They sometimes had dreams that they interpreted for good or bad. Other than this I have never heard of them ever having prophets.
Since the white race of people, that they found inhabiting the Klamath when they first arrived there, which we call the Wa-gas, which must have been thousands of years ago, they do not tell of ever having come in contact with any kind of a white race, or of any other race ever coming among them until the present white race came, which we call Ken-ne-ah. The Klamath River is so inaccessible, winding its way through high mountains, with no valleys, that to this day it is a wild country with lots of game and fish. And there never has been a Preacher of any kind among us to this day.
CHAPTER XXV.
TEACHINGS OF THE KLAMATH INDIANS ON CHILD-BIRTH.
THE Klamath Indians say that a child born at the time the sun is at the farthest north and on the point which it is to turn back south, or as the white man counts time, would be in the month of December and which we count the tenth month, and call Cah-mo, is the worst and most objectionable time we have for a child to be born, most of them die young or in infancy, and if they live they are of little use to themselves or the tribe. A child born in the time in which the acorns fall, which would be from the tenth of October to the twentieth of November, and which time or month we call Can-na-wal-at-tow, is the best or one of the best times, as these children are nearly all bright, healthy and prosperous, and make the leading ones. While children born in April, May and June, as we count the time, also make good, healthy and bright men and women, and also the leading ones. Children born between the twentieth of July and the first of September, which we call Cher-wer-ser-a, are weakly and do not live long, most of them dying young, but if they do live they are foolish and not of any use to their people. Those that are born in the time the white man designates as October, May and June, are the ones that receive the prayers of the mother, grand parent and wise old heads of the tribe, and all look forward to their being useful to the tribe, particularly those that are of the high families. The Klamath Indians are a people that are at any, and all times, praying to the great father of all, and are pleased when a new baby is born. They take the best of care of the mother in child-birth, but if a woman brings into the world a child that is dead or still-born, she is looked down upon and is almost cast aside, and has a hard time to pull through. If she dies in the struggle, there is but little sympathy for her loss, and if she lives, she is ever after called Cam-ma-gay, so that any and all may know her, and if she is a married woman and has had children and saved them, and afterwards brings one into the world dead, she is always afterwards called Quirk-ker-alth.
In all my life among them I have never seen but few of these women, but do know some that have met with this misfortune. The Klamath Indians are the best in the world at handling their women in child-birth, in the old Indian way.