The first explorers of European descent to visit Southern Oregon sometimes turned to Indian dogs for sustenance. When Hudson’s Bay Company trapper Peter Skene Ogden and his party visited Upper Klamath Lake in December 1826, they obtained nine dogs for food from the Klamath Indians.
Seventeen years later in December 1843 John Charles Fremont and his 39 men reached Klamath Lake on his second exploring expedition in the West. With them was a dog that had wandered wounded into camp one cold and rainy night in mountains above Salt Lake, Utah.
At Klamath Lake, Fremont purchased a puppy resembling a wolf from the Klamath Indians. He named it “Tlamath,” pronounced with a “t” instead of a “k” to sound more like the Indian pronunciation.
On New Year’s Eve, their provisions running low while pushing through snow in the Sierra Nevada, the explorers made a “strengthening meal” of their faithful Utah dog. Less than two weeks later, their diet reduced to roasted pine nuts and peas, they ate Tlamath. When some mule meat arrived unexpectedly, the cook added the dog and mule meat to a pea soup. Fremont called it “an extraordinary dinner.”
Source: Fremont, John C. Memoirs of My Life and Times. First ed. New York, N.Y.: Cooper Square Press, 2001. Print. [Originally published Chicago: Belford, Clarke & Co. 1887. ]
