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Bill McGarvey and the Klamath River Indians (25 pages)
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Page: of 25
PAGE 24 THE CALIFORNIANS VO Lb UsMeE. 1-22 /ANEO 3
ec-wan Colonel (his Indian name
Pe Me-quin) had been for the last
50 or 60 years the richest Indian
among the lower Klamaths. When standing erect he was probably a little over six
feet, of medium build, and was very graceful in his movement. He was a fine-looking man, and every inch an aristocrat. He
was a descendant of a very wealthy family
on both sides of the house, and his mother
was born in the Cor-tep village, about
one-half mile below Pec-wan village.
There was five boys and two girls of his
mother’s family. His uncles, aunts, and
grandmother on his father’s side belonged
to the upper division of the tribe, and they
too were a wealthy family. Pec-wan’s
mother was from a family of doctors, his
mother and her two sisters being doctors.
His mother was without question the most
noted and prominent woman doctor that
the lower rivers had among them, for the
past 75 years or more. When she married
his father, whom they called Cor-tep-pish
by his being married to a Cor-tep woman,
she married a man ofa very wealthy family,
and when her mother and father died they
cut her off, and did not give her any part
of the riches of her own family, but divided
it among the four sisters and two brothers.
She had five children, three girls and
two boys, the Colonel being the third
child, and he followed close to his mother’s ways. She would go out and sit on
her doorsteps on the front porch, stoop
over with her elbows on her knees, and
comb her hair over her face with her fingers; then rest her chin on her hands, and
sit gazing into the distance; and other
ways, thereby causing all to be afraid of her
except the Talth [hereditary Yurok aristocracy] and their families, over whom she
had no control. All the wealthy and slave
classes became sorely afraid of her. Whenever the people would see her sitting thus,
they began to murmur among themselves,
saying that she was trying to make someone sick, and that somebody would be
sick. If someone should become sick anywhere within a distance of a number of
miles from her, their first thought was that
Pec-wan Colonel
Wah-kell Harry, displaying some of the wealth inherited from his uncle Pec-wan Colonel,
whom he resembled. Pec-Wan Colonel inherited much of his wealth (and power) from his
mother, a doctor whose behavior terrified slaves and slave-holders alike — but not the Talth.