The Klamath Tribes, formerly the Klamath Indian Tribe of Oregon, are a federally recognized Native American Nation consisting of three Native American tribes who traditionally inhabited Southern Oregon and Northern California in the United States: the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin. The tribal government is based in Chiloquin, Oregon.
History Klamaths traditionally (and to this day) believe everything anyone needed to live was provided by the Creator in their rich land east of the Cascades. They saw success as a reward for virtuous striving and likewise as an assignment of spiritual favor; thus, elders counseled, "Work hard so that people will respect you."
For thousands of years, the Klamath people survived by their industriousness. When the months of long winter nights were upon them, they relied on prudent reserves from the abundant seasons. Toward the end of March, when supplies dwindled, large fish surged up the Williamson, Sprague, and Lost River. On the Sprague River, where Gmok'am'c first began the tradition, the Klamath's still celebrate the Return of C'waam (Lost River sucker (Deltistes luxatus)) Ceremony.
The Klamath bands were bound together by ties of loyalty, family, and food. They lived along the Klamath Marsh, on the banks of Agency Lake, near the mouth of the Lower Williamson River, on Pelican Bay, beside the Link River, and in the uplands of the Sprague River Valley.
The most distinctive feature of pre-contact Klamath culture, compared with other Native American societies, was their individualistic rather than purely communal concept of wealth. Anthropologist Robert Spencer in "The Native Americans" asserts that among the Klamaths, "A basic goal was wealth and the prestige derived from it ... The wealth quest was individual. Persons of 'good' reputation worked to produce and to enhance their social status." Historian Floy Pepper asserts that this set up Klamaths to do relatively well upon contact with white settlers, because "The Klamaths readily accepted certain aspects of the new culture. To work hard, to gain material possessions, to be practical were virtues of both worlds."Floy Pepper, Oregon Indian Treaties and the Law (Portland, Oregon: 1989), p. 63
Contact with white settlers In 1826 Peter Skene Ogden, a fur trapper from the Hudson's Bay Company, was the first white man recorded to have left footprints on Klamath lands. In 1832, the Hudson Bay trappers under John Work were in the Goose Lake Valley and their journals mentioned Hunter's Hot Springs. Work's expedition visited Warner Lakes and Lake Abert and camped at Crooked Creek in the Chandler Park area. They also reported being attacked by Indians.
In 1838, Colonel J. J. Abert, a U.S. engineer, prepared a map that includes Warner Lakes and other natural features using information from the Hudson's Bay Company trappers. In 1843, John C. Fremont led a party which named Christmas (Hart) Lake.
1864 treaty begins Reservation Era
The Klamath Tribes ended hostilities with the invader and ceded more than of land in 1864. They did, however, retain rights to hunt, fish and gather in safety on the lands reserved for the people "in perpetuity" forever, which gave rise to modern litigation discussed below.
After signing the 1864 treaty, members were forcibly placed upon the Klamath Indian Reservation. At the time there was tension between the Klamath and the Modoc. A band of Modoc left the reservation to return to Northern California. The U.S. Army defeated them in the Modoc War (1872–73), and forcibly returned them to Oregon. The Klamath Indian agency actually included three tribes: the Klamath, Modoc, and the Yahooskin Band of Northern Paiute Indians. In 1874, Oregon's legislature created Lake County, Oregon, which included the reservation lands (and from which Klamath County, Oregon was later separated).
Missionaries, settlers, and ranchers followed, as the Klamath assimilated. One of the early Indian agents was Rev. Linus M. Nickerson, a former U.S. Army Chaplain in the American Civil War who had also worked for the Freedmen's Bureau in Fairfax, Virginia. In addition to conducting worship services, establishing a Sunday School and educating members of all three tribes (and members of other tribes they had adopted), Nickerson helped plan for improvements.
A Klamath Tribal Agency-sponsored sawmill was completed in 1870 and construction of Agency buildings began. By 1873, Tribal members were selling lumber to Fort Klamath military post and many private parties. By 1881 tribal members had already built a boarding school, an office building, many residences and agricultural outbuildings, miles of fencing and were working on a new police headquarters. By 1896 timber sales outside the reservation were estimated at a quarter of a million board feet. When a railroad was built in 1911, reservation timber became extremely valuable. The economy of Klamath County was sustained by it for decades.
Early in the reservation period, Klamath Tribal members demonstrated an eagerness to turn new economic opportunities to their advantage. Both men and women took advantage of the vocational training offered, and soon held a wide variety of skilled jobs within the reservation, as well as, the Fort Klamath military post, and in Linkville.
By 1881, Indian Agent Nickerson in his third annual report to his supervisors in Washington stated that a 50-pupil boarding school had been established, apprentices served at the sawmill, carpenter's shop, and blacksmith shop, and a 10-member native police force led by the Klamath tribal chief and sub-chief kept order. However, he worried about superstitious practices and particularly requested funds to set up a hospital because native doctors were losing control, and threatened to poison people. He also noted that tribal members were excellent workers and sought after for work outside the reservation and that a syphilis problem since contact with whites three decades earlier was being controlled. Nickerson also requested 300 yearling cattle and 20 breeder stallions to augment the ranching operations, as well as steel plows, but recognized that climate issues in the high desert would limit European type agriculture (the tribes cultivating some root crops and harvested aquatic plants in the swampy lake that gave the County its name during the summertime). However, the irrigation system that Nickerson suggested in 1884 was only built 16 years later, after his death and a severe drought throughout the west.
Before the reservation era, horses were considered an important form of wealth, so ranching and the ownership of cattle was easily accepted. Also, Nickerson on behalf of the Indian Agency initially leased some tribal lands to ranchers. Today the cattle industry remains important economically.
Also, the Tribes had long-established trade networks, which led to successful freighting businesses. Nickerson requested sturdy wagons, and while some of those supplied proved inadequate, tribal operations used 80 wagons by 1881 (as well as 7 mowing machines and 5 sulky hay rakes and many smaller implements). By August 1889, 20 tribal teams worked year-round to supply both private and commercial needs in the rapidly growing county.
Klamath Termination Act
By the 1950s the Klamath tribes were among the wealthiest tribes in the United States. They owned (and judiciously managed for long-term yield) the largest remaining stand of Ponderosa pine in the west. Self-sufficient, the Klamath were the only tribes in the United States that paid for all federal, state and private services used by their members.
Congress ended federal supervision of the Klamath tribe in Oregon in 1954. The Klamath Termination Act (Public Law 587, enacted on August 13, 1954), embodied the U.S. Indian termination policy. Under this act, all federal supervision over Klamath lands, as well as federal aid provided to the Klamath because of their special status as Indians, ended.
Termination of the Klamath tribe was part of a broader Federal Indian termination policy which persisted for about a decade after the Termination Act of 1953, which reflected the political climate of the era, i.e. fierce anti-communism. Senator Arthur Watkins, one of the primary movers behind termination, reportedly "scoured the nation looking for tribes to terminate." In total, 113 Indian tribes were dissolved in the 1950s. There are 562 tribes recognized by the Federal Government in 2017.
The Klamaths, in particular, were targeted for termination because they appeared to be prospering. A rarity among Native American groups, the Klamaths were financially self-sufficient, being the only tribe in the US to be funding the administrative costs of the Bureau of Indian Affairs through income tax contributions. By the 1940s, only 10% of Klamath families relied upon public welfare assistance.Donald L. Fixico, "Termination and Relocation - Federal Indian Policy, 1945–1960 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1969), p16 An economist noted that "the Klamaths were never, since 1918, a 'burden' on taxpayers.".William Thomas Trulove, "The Economic Impact of Federal Indian Policy: Incentives and Response of the Klamath Indians (unpublished University of Oregon Ph.D. thesis, 1971), p16 This self-sufficiency was made possible by the richness of the reservation's natural timber resources. The unsuitability of the woodlands for conventional farming had meant that most of it had escaped the fate of being given to white settlers under the 1887 Allotment Act. Consequently, were retained as tribal property.
As testified to Congress in 1954, "The Klamath Tribe has been considered one of the most advanced Indian groups in the United States."US Congress 1954a: 203-204 They did have an unusually high standard of living compared to other Native American tribes. But this was partly due to the sale of communal timber reserves which provided every Klamath with regular disbursements, that amounted to $800 a year by 1950 ().Stanford Research Institute, "Preliminary Planning for Termination of Federal Control over the Klamath Indian Tribe" (Melno Park, California: Stanford Research Institute, 1956) p29
The Klamaths were also considered culturally suitable for termination. As testified to Congress by the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, "It is our belief ... these people have been largely integrated into all phases of the economic and social life of the area ... Their dress is modern, and there remains little vestige of religious or their traditional Indian customs ..." Klamath traditions also encouraged individualism and discouraged collectivism, the tribe having originally been a loose collection of autonomous tribelets which had only rarely, in their long history, united together in order to fight a common enemy. The 1956 Stanford report found that only half of Klamaths had a strong sense of identification with the tribe.Stanford Research Institute, "Preliminary Planning for Termination of Federal Control over the Klamath Indian Tribe" (Melno Park, California: Stanford Research Institute, 1956) p124