“A Guide to the Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest ”

By Robert H. Ruby

Klamath

(Lutuamian)

The anthropologist A. L. Kroeber suggests that the name Klamath stems possibly from the Calapooya name, Athlameth, for this people. Anthropologist Albert Samuel Gatschet reported that the tribe’ own name for themselves, Maklaks, means “people,” “community,” and the like. It has also been reported, by anthropologist Leslie Spier, that the name Klamath is reserved for the Klamath-Marsh-Williamson River subdivision – the Auksni. Other Klamaths use the name only by courtesy. From the Canadian trappers has come down a hybrid French-English name, La Lakes.

Oregon ’s Klamath Lake and Klamath County bear the Klamath name today. With in Klamath County is the city of Klamath Falls on Interstate 97. A river in Oregon and California , and a town in the latter state also bear the name. Before their treaty with the United States in 1864, the Klamaths – with two other tribes who signed the treaty, the Modocs and the Paiute Yahuskins – claimed over twenty million acres in present-day Oregon and California . The Klamaths gained much attention when the United States terminated its trust relationship with them by an act dated August 13, 1954 (25 Stat. 718 USC X 564).

Location: In 1957, 404 of the 2,038 Klamaths lived outside Oregon . Three hundred of those who remained in Oregon lived mostly in the south-central part of the state, but off the reservation. In the post-termination era the Klamaths have tended to live in the general area where the Klamaths proper formerly lived. The former village sites were on Klamath Lake and Klamath Marsh and on the Williamson and Sprague rivers.

Numbers: One the final tribal roll at the time of termination in 1958 there were 2,133 members. In 1977 the same number were listed as Klamaths. In 1848, Klamath numbers had stood roughly at 1,000. Estimates of their 1780 numbers have varied from 400 to 1,000. In 1923, there were 1,201 Klamaths, Modocs, and other Indians under the Klamath superintendency. In 1930, 2,034 were listed as Klamaths and Modocs. In 1937 1,912 were listed as Klamaths, probably including members of other tribes.

History: Because of their interior location in present-day south-central Oregon and north-central California , the Klamaths were able to avoid white men until late in the contact period. The Hudson ’s Bay Company trader Peter Skene Ogden, who met them in 1826, called them a “happy race.” They would not be so for long, he believed, after they began associating with whites. Among the goods that the Klamaths obtained from whites were guns and horses. At the Dalles on the north they obtained from other natives horses, blankets, buffalo skins, and dried salmon, in exchange for slaves that they captured from California tribes. They also exchanged beads, and the seeds of the wocus, which they gathered in marshy places in their homelands. They processed the seeds into nutritious food that was used in soups or mixed into flour to make cakes. The Klamaths also met annually with other tribes to trade at such places as Yainax east of Klamath Lake . They harpooned fish and shot waterfowl with bows and arrows. The clothing of both sexes consisted of fiber skirts and basket caps, plus in cold weather tule leggings and sandals, mantles of skin and fiber, and fur mittens. Not until early in the nineteenth century did they adopt buckskin clothing and footwear, which they obtained through trade. They wore dentalia shells in nasal-septum perforations and flattened the heads of their infants. They also adopted the practice of tattooing the body. Their winter habitations were semi-subterranean earthen lodges, which were circular pits as much as four feet deep.

On October 14, 1864 , the Klamaths’ treaty (16 Stat. 718) was signed by twenty-one of their chiefs, along with four Modoc and two Yahuskin headmen. These peoples traded to the United States their high, semiarid lands east of the Cascade Mountains for the Klamath Reservation. This reservation of abut 1,107,847 acres was proclaimed on February 17, 1870 (16 Stat. 383). The Klamath Agency had been instituted on May 12, 1866 , at the upper end of Agency Lake , a few miles south of Fort Klamath and north of Klamath Lakes . The Klamaths settled at the agency with a few disgruntled Modocs. Most of the latter tribe refused to join the Klamaths on the reservation, preferring to remain in their own homelands. Because of intertribal friction, the Modocs and some Upland Klamaths and Yahuskins were placed at Yainax, where a sub-agency was established in 1870 some thirty-five miles east of the main Klamath Agency.

The boundaries of the Klamath Reservation had been established by surveys in 1871 and 1888 and were reported on December 18, 1896 . An act (30 Stat. 571) was passed on July 1, 1898 , authorizing negotiations for a settlement with the Klamaths for the lands that had been excluded from the reservation by erroneous surveys. It was agreed on June 17, 1901 , that the Klamaths were to be paid $537,007.20 for 621,824.28 acres of “Klamath Reservation – Excluded Lands.” Because many Klamaths sought allotments on sections of the reservation that originally had been intended for a military road company, the allotment process, which had begun on the reservation in 1895, was interrupted two years later by conflicts that remained unresolved until 1906. Allotment resumed three years later. By an act of May 27, 1902 (32 Stat. 260), Klamath children born after allotting had been completed in 1895 were authorized to receive further allotments, but their elders were unhappy that those born after April 15, 1910m could not do so, though as tribal members they retained an equity in tribal properties.

In 1902 the Modocs, who had been exiled to the Quapaw Agency in Oklahoma after their defeat in 1872 – 73 in their war with the United States , sent representatives to the Klamaths seeking permission of the Modoc tribe to receive allotments on the Klamath Reservation if they returned to the area. The Klamath Council approved the request, and in 1903 twenty-one Modocs settled at the upper end of the northeast portion of the reservation. Forty-seven others wanted to come at a later time. In 1909, Congress authorized allotments to Quapaw Modocs on the Klamath Reservation, but then the Klamaths opposed letting them have the land. Sixteen Modocs, however, were certified for allotments when allotting resumed in 1909. In all 177,719.62 acres were allotted to 1,174 Indians, and 6,094.77 acres were reserved for agency, school, and church purposes.

Unlike most Oregon Indians the Klamaths were not victimized by great epidemics, nor did they come into violent confrontations with whites. Yet in the roughly 100-year history of the Klamath Reservation Indians, perhaps nothing changed their lives more then the termination of their trust relationship with the United States .

Government and Claims: The roots of the modern Klamath General Council, as the tribe was called, lay in the establishment in 1909 of a council to deal more effectively with agency staff. In 1929 the tribe established a business committee. On June 15, 1935 , a majority of Klamaths voted to reject the provisions of the Indian Reorganization Act (48 Stat. 984). The termination of the 861,125-acre Klamath Reservation came about as members were permitted to vote for themselves and for their children to be either “withdrawing” members (who would receive about $50,000 each for their share of the tribal assets) or “remaining” members (who would hold tribal interests in common under state law). There were two factions wanting termination. One represented those wanting immediate creation of individual Indian rights, dissolution of the tribe, and distribution of its assets. The other, the tribal governing body, sought tribal identity and tribal rights. Of the 2,133 members on the final roll in 1958, there were 1,660 electing to withdraw and 473 elected to remain. The individual holders of land no longer in trust became subject to taxation. In 1980 the “remaining” Klamaths and their heirs, a total of about 600, received about $173,000 for each of the remaining 473 shares in the thousands of acres of forest lands taken by the federal government through condemnation in 1974 and added to the Winema National Forest .