I walk on the old bed and make a racket on the ceiling with my hands, but the music and snoring doesn't stop. So I go outside and sit on the hotel steps, my hands folded around my head.

The night is still and warm; a break from the icy snow storms to the east and violent showers to the west. A noise breaks the silence - a shuffling. I am surprised when I lift my eyes and see a bear - a big bear - staring at me.

I focus; he's behind a cage - a sideshow attraction for the town's gas station, but did I know that? Henry the Bear, poor sap, used to be part of an exotic collection at a school for boys gone bad. But as the school failed, no one would take Henry,* so here he sits, always awakened by passing cars and drunks.

I stare back at the bear; his sorrow makes me forget the gruesomeness of the movie I just watched, and to consider my own situation. Three years ago, my brother and I found this stone tool in the Eastern Oregon desert, and I have sought to understand the people who may have left it there so many years ago.

Flashes of snow to the east diverted me here - I had high hopes of continuing a search for more stones in the arid, rock landscape along the John Day River. This is not my first time in Mitchell. Last time, I was pursuing this stone's story as well. Last time, I ended up here too, stuck. Maybe I'm like Henry. Big dreams of the Oregon wild, but here we are.

I have sought the origin of this rock by reconstructing its history through travel. I have learned things I never imagined, about ways the very diverse Indians of Oregon lived, ate, survived and traveled. I have learned a little of their origins, but am I any closer to answers?

However you say goodbye to a bear, I don't know, but as I close the door on the old hotel, I hear him sort of groaning. I close my door, and immediately hear the strange showtunes, the snoring again. Infuriated, I extend my tripod's legs and slam them against the ceiling. Nothing helps, so again I check the television to see what channel the drunken hunter has left on. Again, the station doesn't show up.

A few minutes later, I hear someone pounding on the door above me. Then some loud arguing, and finally, cheering from different rooms. I wake at noon the next day.

Mitchell is at the southern end of the Columbia Plateau; a huge flood basalt region covering much of Northern Oregon, Southern Washington and Idaho. Through the center of this, the dividing line between Oregon and Washington, is the Pacific Northwest's largest river - the Columbia River.

While much of the history of Oregon's Indians in the places I have visited so far have been largely histories of subsistence, the Columbia River's temperate climate and bountiful resources meant the development of more complex civilization - the Chinookan people settled in small tribes along the highlands of the Columbia River, and hunted deep into the Columbia Plateau lands north and south of the river.