NOTES FROM "THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN" BY ES CURTIS

VOLUME-13 THE KLAMATH

LANGUAGE: Lutuamian 

LOCATION: Oregon -Southeastern Oregon, bounded on the west by the Cascade mountains, northward by Bend, southward by the border with California, and east by the Sycan marsh. 

DRESS: Men and women ordinarily wore nothing except a small skin loincloth. For protection there were moccasins, robes, and leggings.

The above gravures are KLAMATH TRIBAL COSTUME and KLAMATH DUCK HUNTER

DWELLINGS: The winter dwelling was a conical roof of timbers, tules, grass, and earth erected over a circular excavation. The summer house had an elliptical or rectangular framework of willow poles set into the ground and lashed to the top of a ridge pole, and the steep sides were thatched from the peak to the ground with three layers of grass and tule mats. 

RELIGION /CEREMONIES: The Klamath held no strictly religious ceremony and their beliefs were vague. The puberty dance, war dance, victory dance and a social round dance were not religious, but were observed. 

QUOTES FROM "THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN:" "The Klamath Indians of southeastern Oregon are the larger of two divisions of the Lutuami, the other being their neighbors, the Medoc."

The above gravures are THINKING OF THE OLD DAYS and KLAMATH WOMAN

"The character of the Klamath habitat, studded with lakes and marshes, which provided their principal food, made the canoe an object of great importance. The Klamath canoe is simply the thin shell of a log-pine, cedar, or Douglas spruce-undercut at both ends at an angle of about forty-five degrees, but less at the bow than at the stern. Both ends are shovel-nosed, that is, they are not pointed but are practically as wide as the beam of the craft."

"The Klamath and the Modoc, especially the latter, had their share of difficulties with immigrants and soldiers. In 1852 the Modoc slaughtered an entire party en route to California... In 1864 a treaty was negotiated between the United States and the Klamath, the Modoc, and certain Shoshoneans of Oregon, establishing the present Klamath reservation. As this lay entirely within their former boundaries, the Klamath were inclined to lord it over the Modoc, who were therefore removed to a sub-agency in another part of the reservation."

The above gravures are PRAYING TO THE SPIRITS OF CRATER LAKE and KLAMATH CHILD

"The staple article of food was the seed of the yellow water-lily. It is still used as a delicacy. The extensive marshes of the region are in many places covered solidly to the extent of hundreds of thousands of acres with the spreading leaves of this plant. "Wokas," as the plant and the seed are called, is gathered in the latter part of August and through the whole of September. Poling a canoe through the masses of leaves and trailing stems, the harvester, always a woman, pulls the nearly ripe pods from their stems and drops them into a canoe. The mature pods, having burst open, are too sticky to be taken in the hand, and are scooped up in a tule ladle and deposited in a canoe-shaped basket. At the end of the day the contents of the basket are poured into a pit about two feet in diameter and of equal depth, and from day to day the harvest of ripe pods is added. The whole is covered with a mat. At the end of the season the contents of the pits, now by fermentation a viscous mass, is transferred to a canoe, and after an admixture of water is thoroughly stirred so as to separate the seeds, which drop to the bottom. The gluey liquid and refuse are skimmed off, and the seeds are drained on mats. After more thorough drying and partially cooking the seeds by shaking them in a tray with a few embers, the woman cracks the hulls with muller and melate, and separates the kernels from the hulls in a winnowing tray, which is operated with much the same motion as a gold-miners pan. The finished product is now ready to be thoroughly dried on mats and stored, formerly on pits, now in bags. The seeds are prepared for eating by parching them with embers in a basketry tray, a process which causes them to swell and burst."

Source:  http://www.curtis-collection.com/tribe%20data/klamath.html