The Enterprise, White Salmon, WA., December 23, 1910, page 4

“TOO MUCH PICTURE MAKE JAKE DIE”

     Jack Coon and wife, Klickitats, came over from Hood River the first of the week to visit old Jake Hunt, who is ill from a cold at his place near Husum, and may die.  Coon's squaw is a daughter of the old man.  Jack told the Enterprise that ”Papa” is ill because he have too many pictures, pointing to the one in the window of this office. “But why does it make him sick?” we asked.  “Too much picture; make too many of him; scatter all over; weakens “Papa,” so when cold come now he died.  I have picture taken long time ago.  Make me weak, so had ache two weeks under hat.  Indians no like pictures taken. “Indians like to see the pictures, but believe that sickness will come to them if they should submit to the camera thinking it separates them into too many, thus empowering the picture with personality.  Coon informed us that Jake, “Papa’s son,” is doctoring the old man.  The young man -- and he is 50 years old -- poses as a sort of medicine man, and had a good practice a few years ago. “I go Yakima,” he says, “make signs over sick man, feel him hand with my hands, charge him four, five, six, many cayuse.” “In this respect he was like the late Jack John Alexander Dowie, who started out laying his hands on people, first on their head, then on their pocketbook.  Young Jake has a homestead of valuable land up the White Salmon, and lands at Yakima.  Some years ago he went to the Pendleton country, where the Cayuse made their homes in the time of the “Bridge of the Gods,” to heal the sick and get some ponies, but the officers got hold of him and cut his remarkably long braids done up in seal-skin tips.  Thus shorn of his pride and power, he returned to the White Salmon broken-hearted, and went into solitude for months.  His hair failed to grow to the same length and he has never been the same powerful medicine man since the episode.