HOW A COR-TEP GIRL HAD HER WISH GRANTED.
About sixty years ago there lived a girl in the Cor-tep village by the
name of Mee-cher-us-o-may, and her parents urged her to marry a young
man who lived farther up the river at the village of Mor-eck. (I have
forgotten his name.) The girl did not like the man, yet her parents
kept urging her to marry him against her will. There was two of her
girl friends that was going down the river to Reck-woy, so she got
into the boat or Indian canoe with them and started down the river. As
they glided along Mee-cher-us-o-may kept wishing that some wild animal
would take her, kill her and eat her. When they got to a place called
Hay-way-gaw they all camped out on the bank of the river, back some
twenty yards or more from the waters edge. The canoe was pulled up on
the sloping sand so as to make it safe for the night, then they made a
fire, cooked their evening meal and then talked until it was time to
go to bed. All this time Mee-cher-us-o-may was wishing some harm would
come to her. The three girls made their bed for the night so that all
three could sleep together and when they went to bed Mee-cher-us-o-may
slept in the center, so all went to sleep. In the morning she was
missing, she got her wish. She had been taken from between the other
two girls, and on examination they could see very plainly where a wild
animal had dragged her over the dry sand, down to the edge of the
water, into the river and disappeared with her, and she was never seen
again. They thought an animal of the leopard species took her as some
of the animals have been seen a number of times on the lower Klamath,
and the Indians are very much afraid of them. This happened when I was
a little girl.