News articles and Southern Oregon-related correspondence with the Oregon Superintendency for Indian Affairs.
   
Click here for Superintendency correspondence 1844-1900.


    If you will look at the map of the United States on which the orange colored sections are the Indian reservations, and will compare the total area of these reservations with the space occupied by all the New England states, New York, Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland, you will have, perhaps, a more definite idea of the vast expanse of territory still reserved to the Indians.
    Some two months of this last summer I spent in visiting some of the most western and northern of these reservations. Crossing the continent by the Santa Fe route to Los Angeles, I attended the sessions of the National Educational Association (which brought together some 10,000 public school teachers from all parts of the country) and the sessions of the Institute for Teachers in the Indian Schools, which met with the National Association and continued its sessions for some ten days after the adjournment of the larger gathering. Between three and four hundred teachers, agents and employees in the Indian service attended this Institute. The interest shown in all the discussions, the methods advocated, the spirit which evidently actuated most of those who were present, and the average of intelligence and of professional equipment on the part of those teachers in the Indian service, were most gratifying.
    After visiting the contract school at San Diego, California, and the large and admirable government non-reservation boarding school (with its trade school and school buildings for 350 children), as well as the Puyallup school at Tacoma, Washington, I spent several weeks in informing myself as fully as possible of the state of affairs upon the Klamath reservation, in Southern Oregon, and the great northern reservations in Montana; viz., the Blackfeet agency, at Browning, Montana; and the Fort Belknap and Fort Peck agencies.
    We went first to the Klamath agency in Southern Oregon. That agency has about six hundred Klamath and five hundred Modocs and Piutes. It has about 1650 square miles. There are two government schools, one at the main agency costing about $18,000 a year for 130 children, and the other, at Yainax (the sub-agency), costing about $17,000 a year for 125 children. Of the 1072 Indians on the reservation, 450 can read, and 650 speak English well enough to get on in ordinary conversation about everyday affairs.
    They built 41 houses last year. They are able to earn about 60 percent, of their living by civilized employments, 20 percent comes by hunting and fishing, and the government gives them 20 percent of their subsistence. We saw nine barns put up in the frame this year but not yet sided in. They need more lumber. The saw-mill has been burned down recently, and they feared it would take nine months to get another; but I hope that by this time the burnt mill has been replaced. Two hundred houses are occupied by the Indians--that is, a house to every five or six persons. They are small, one-story frame houses, with a steep roof; but they are comfortable and promising.
    In summer these Indians go out into their wickiups, made by making a circle of saplings or poles, and bending the tops in together, bending them in a small circle, the whole (except the central hole in the top) covered with tule mats, woven from a rush which covers miles of land along shallow lakes and streams. Some of these wickiups are very pretty summer homes; and the removal from the winter home to the summer wickiup is not a much more serious relapse toward barbarism than is the "outing," the week or two of "camping out," for us.
    On the whole, I do not think these Indians have taken any backward steps. They cultivate about a thousand acres, but agriculture is discouraging work, with them, for they have frost every month in the year, and the garden growths are "cut down" by frost, again and again. I wonder that they have patience to raise as much as they do! There are 28,000 acres fenced in. I saw many miles of excellent, strongly built fences, of post and wire. Last year they raised 5,000 bushels of oats, rye and barley; 4,500 tons of hay, and made 1,000 lbs. of butter. They sawed 852,000 feet of lumber. By hauling freight they earned $2,130 with their teams; and they sold $22,000 worth of farm products. They own 3,500 horses and ponies (though the ponies are worthless except for riding), 3,500 cattle, 350 swine, and 650 domestic fowls.
    My constant sermon to them was:
    "Learn how to change ponies into cows!"
    I had a talk with an old chief of the Piutes about that. He was a conservative, a bad piece of inertia, stout, apathetic, good-natured but reactionary! I asked:
    "How many cattle have you?"
    "Ugh, seven."
    "How many ponies?"
    "Ugh--suppose seventy."
    "How much does it cost to raise a two-year-old heifer? Does it cost more than to raise a pony?"
    He admitted that it did not.
    "What is a two-year-old steer worth?"
    "Twenty-five dollars."
    "What is a pony worth?"
    "Nothing."
    "Then," I asked, "why don't you get rid of your ponies and raise cattle to sell?"
    "What for sell them?"
    "To get money," I replied.
    "Don't want money."
    "Well, if you had cows you could have milk."
    "Don't want milk; want pony. Indian don't want cow! Ugh! Indian want ponies."
    He was almost the only one of that type whom I met at Klamath, however. The others were wide-awake to their future and were eager to make money.
    Prominent among the more enterprising men of this reservation is Henry Jackson--perhaps 48 years old, a man of substance, owning cattle and improvements worth $25,000 to $30,000. He is a "Pit River" Indian by birth--and the Modocs used to make raids upon this less powerful and less warlike tribe, 100 miles and more to the west and south; and in such a raid, forty years ago, Henry Jackson, a boy of five years, was taken prisoner and brought back with many others, the slaves of their captors. Old Chief Lalu had Henry as his slave.
    As we were driving across the reservation to the sub-agency at Yainax, we camped, to give the horses rest and feed and to take our luncheon, on the bank of a pretty little river whose waters were overhung by willow thickets. Old Chief Lalu's wickiup and house stood above the stream fifty rods away and he came to call on us at luncheon and broke bread with us. He is very old; but his eye is still keen and he is alert and active for one of his years. As we sat upon the grass beneath the willow at luncheon, a beautiful deer--a large five-year-old stag with a noble pair of antlers, came daintily and cautiously towards us, and finally rubbed his nose against old Lalu's shoulder!
    'Twas a tame "mule-deer"--a fine specimen--and the feeding horses, the luncheon spread by the stream, the little circle of white men and two or three Indians and the tame deer feeding from the old chief's hand, made an Arcadian scene!
    I asked Chief Lalu:
    "Do you remember Henry Jackson?"
    "Yes! When I go on the war-path down Pit River, 'most fifty years ago, we get about fifty of them--Pit River Indians. We bring HIM back. Henry Jackson was my slave, five years old! When he get so big (showing height with his hands--about fifteen years old)--I let him go free. He's a BIG man now; he own best cattle--MOST cattle anyone here. He got horses and barns; he's worth thirty thousand dollars! He's my slave once!"
    Except the lazy, the vicious and the reactionary everyone respects Henry Jackson. He came to see me and I talked with him for an hour or two. He speaks English well. He is one of those strong, decided, practical men who make their way in any community. He would be a "leading man" wherever he lived in any community of farmers or cattlemen. But the great trouble which now overhangs his prospects, I want to tell you of briefly; for it illustrates the difficulties which a man of strong character, good purpose, and deep feelings must overcome, in breaking away from and breaking through the superstitions on which he was reared.
    Henry Jackson has been through an awful experience. He had a boy very dear to him who had been in the Indian school. Lung trouble developed. The father tried all kinds of medicine and many physicians; but the son did not recover. He was the hope of his father. Like other half-desperate parents under similar circumstances, Henry Jackson was ready for any new treatment which promised recovery. There appeared among the Indians an oily-tongued Chinaman who had let his hair grow long, and said he practiced "Indian medicine." Everything else having failed, Henry Jackson at last consented to let the Chinaman try to cure his boy. This Chinese quack and impostor sang his incantations over the son for a week and more. He wished to destroy the influence of the old Indian doctor who had been the boy's physician; and at last, in a crisis, after the physician and the father had sat beside the bed into the gray dawning, while the sweat of terror dripped from the father lest he lose his son, the Chinaman said:
    "Your boy never get well while old Indian doctor is living."
    No one believes that Henry Jackson killed that Indian doctor, but within a few days after this prophecy, he was found twenty miles away, with his skull crushed in. Then the enemies of Henry Jackson closed in upon him and accused him of murder. The men who know him best say that they have not the slightest idea that he knows anything about the crime. He faces the charge like a man, and says he will "live down" the ill repute which the charge for the time being has given him. This is one of the problems such men have to meet, in breaking away from barbarism.
    Henry Wilson, one of the judges of the Court of Indian Offenses, interpreted for us when we spoke on Sunday at Yainax to a large audience of Indians, only half of whom understood English.
    Afterward Judge Wilson spoke to these Indians himself. He speaks and acts like an educated gentleman. He is exceedingly interested in their progress, their education, and their attempts at self-government and active citizenship, by voting to make their own local roads and dig irrigating ditches by joint labor.
    Jesse Kirk is another leading Indian, one of the strongest on the reservation; a man who can help his people to get on without an agent when this agency is discontinued, as it soon should be.
    This reservation owes much to its agent, Captain Oliver Applegate, who, like his father before him, has been a lifelong friend of the Indians whom he knows so well. The son of a man who pioneered the way for Fremont, and guided some of Fremont's earliest and most daring explorations in the Northwest; Oliver Applegate married perhaps the best kind of wife for an Indian agent, the daughter of a home missionary of the Methodist church. Under the leadership of Captain Applegate, the Klamath agency should soon attain to the highest possible success for an agency--the state of FITNESS TO BE DONE AWAY WITH--the honor of having prepared the Indians it has cared for, to live as independent, self-supporting citizens of the United States, able to manage their own affairs. And to this end Capt Applegate says he looks forward hopefully.
    I wish that it were possible for you all to hear the speeches of such a council as we held with 150 of the Northern Yanktonais Sioux and Assiniboines at Fort Peck. For a long afternoon we listened to them, drew out their views of their own life and its possibilities by questions, gave them our ideas, and answered their questions. You would have felt a profound sympathy with men of no mean natural ability who found themselves utterly at a loss, unable to live in the old way, confronted with a civilization which has destroyed all their old manner of life and has not yet taught them how to support themselves under the new conditions!
    Typical of their condition in this transition stage, and of their only hope--education to self-support, and Christianization--was the speech of one of the oldest chiefs. He had called out "returned students"--young men, from the Carlisle school--and these young men had spoken well and hopefully of "the new way. Then, at the close of the conference, the old chief said:
    "When I was a young chief, all the young men kept still and the old men talked in the councils; and that was right, for the old men KNEW, and we did what the old men said. But I have lived to see a time when the other thing must be done. We old men must be silent, and we must hear the young men speak. For we must all go the white man's way. There is no other way now. The buffalo are gone. There is no game. And we old men could not go east. But our children have gone east and they know the white man's way. A light comes from the east, and our young men have seen it. We old men must listen to them. We must keep silent, and go in the white man's way!
    The most interesting fact connected with the inspection of the Blackfeet agency, and of the Fort Peck agency where Major Pratt was with me and we spent our entire afternoon in conference with over a hundred of the leading Indians, was the growing conviction on the part of the leading Indians themselves, that free government "rations" were not making them manly and self-supporting, and that "some other way" must be found. The steadily growing disposition to ask for more good cattle for breeding, to be issued to them instead of rations, was very noticeable. If the Department so shapes its policy, with these northern tribes, as to limit the issue of rations to such of the old, the infirm and the fatherless young as really need them, and for two or three years issues more stock-cattle and presses upon Indians the absolute necessity of their putting up hay in the summer to keep their cattle through the winter, there is every reason to believe that these Indians could and would become self-supporting within three or four years.
    But the man-destroying effect of continuous free-feeding. is painfully evident in many ways.
The Red Man, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, January 1, 1900, page 3


    Kalama, the housekeeper of the late Alfred Carter, who died at his home on Forest Creek a short time ago, died recently at the county hospital, aged about sixty years. There is something almost pathetic about her death. When the whites took possession of this beautiful and fertile valley with its rare and richly variegated surroundings, Kalama was a little girl surrounded by a powerful tribe whose bravery and warlike spirit made them famous throughout the United States. Her once great tribe is now almost extinct. A few yet survive on the Siletz Reservation, and there is but one now living in Jackson County.
Valley Record, Ashland, June 7, 1900, page 1


    Klamath Falls, Or., Oct. 12.--The Klamath Indian Reservation embraces a large scope of the most fertile lands in the northern portion of Klamath County, and roughly estimated, a hundred square miles of equally as rich country. In the Sprague and other valleys of less note 1200 Indians make their home on these lands. In riding through the district, one would never surmise that it was inhabited by such a people, unless he met the red men. Large, commodious residences, extensive stock farms, fine hay meadows, great stacks of hay, good stock upon every hand, and in fine condition, in fact, a general air of prosperity everywhere give it the appearance of a prosperous white man's community, instead of a region inhabited by the once savage Piutes and Modocs.
    The Indians, with few exceptions, are fairly well educated, and even the women speak the English language with good accent and talk intelligently. The traveler, upon visiting an Indian abode, finds it is necessary, usually, to speak a sort of broken English to carry on an intelligent conversation. Not so on this reservation. He at once finds that the Indians understand the English language thoroughly, and speak it fluently. In passing through the reservation recently a "paleface" approached a house for information, and, seeing a young mother holding a child in her arms, spoke thus: "Which road, Yainax?" Pointing to the high way which forked near the premises: "The right hand road leads to Yainax, the left to Bonanza," came the prompt reply. At another place, the inquiry was made: "Where man?" The Indian woman replied with perfect accent: "My husband is not at home. He has gone over to Yainax to consult the reservation physician." So it is at every hand. The Indians are educated and refined to a remarkable degree.
    The greater percent of the population of the reservation are highly prosperous While they make money without any great effort, they are in no wise of the class who follow the very common practice of "come easy, go easy." Not long since, an Indian had a lawyer in Klamath Falls to do some legal business for him, for which the fee was nominal. The Indian asked the attorney if he had change to cash a check. The lawyer replied in the affirmative and drew forth a few silver pieces. His client handed him a $5000 check, the proceeds of a recent sale of cattle. The lawyer did not cash it.
    Many of the Indians do a big haying and stock business annually. They have large and well-improved ranches, in the allotments by the government, tracts of land are given to every member of the family, and care is taken that the claims adjoin. A large family may thus, and do in many instances, own large ranches together.
    Captain Oliver C. Applegate, the government agent, has been connected with the management of the Indian affairs of this section for 30 years or more, and thoroughly understands his business. He is courteous and always ready to give information concerning his work. He informed an Oregonian correspondent that in the management of his 1200 "children" the assistance of but 12 policemen was required. He has a chief, and the others are subordinates. All the officers are Indians, and absolutely trustworthy. They may be sent to any part of the state, or even California. They never sleep, and scarcely eat, riding day and night on these journeys, and carry out instructions to the letter. A policeman was sent to California recently after two horse thieves who had escaped from the reservation. He rode two days and nights without sleep, and returned with the men strapped to the stolen horses.
    Captain Applegate says that the police men are not entirely employed looking after outlaw aborigines. A few years ago the white officers were chasing these Indians, many of whom were thieves and murderers, but now his policemen have to look after white men. This is true of the stockmen who graze their herds upon the reservation, and quite often "forget" to pay the toll, and also to keep them from driving away Indian stock which they sometimes mistake for their own.
    Irrigation of the reservation lands is being looked after by the government. Speaking of this work, Captain Applegate said: "The irrigation system, which I was authorized to inaugurate last year, by the initial surveys, will make productive large areas now suitable for pasturage purposes only. If the government backs us up with the necessary funds, which it undoubtedly will, not less than 100,000 acres will be made as valuable as any lands in fertile Klamath County. The Indians are making good progress in improving their allotments. They have erected many good residences and barns, and within the past two years enclosed many thousand acres of land with substantial rail and post fences. Last year they built on the Klamath marsh about 50 miles of fence of this character. I estimate the amount of hay put up on Indian farms this year at 10,000 tons."
    The government improvements on the reservation are of a very substantial order. At Klamath Agency their worth is estimated at $6000; at the Yainax boarding school about $6000, and at the Klamath boarding school $15,000. The average attendance at the Yainax school is about 100 and at Klamath Agency the school attendance is about 125. These schools are an interesting study within themselves. Tots 5 and 6 years, to men and women 25 and 30 years of age, are among the pupils. it is the purpose of the government fully to educate the Indians. They may enter the school at 4 years of age, and remain until highly proficient in all the branches, no matter how long the time required. The majority, however, leave at the age of 18 to 20 years. After reaching a certain stage they do not seem to make further advancement.
    The schools are divided into convenient departments and are presided over by competent teachers. Work in the dining rooms and kitchens, dormitories and laundry departments is performed by the students under the supervision of whites or the more experienced Indians. The regulation uniforms are worn, and are kept clean and neat. As a rule, the children are well behaved and attentive, apparently more obedient than the average public school pupil. While modern games have been introduced, they cannot supplant the amusements which were so dear to their parents in early days of civilization. The lasso commands favor with the boy. He will bide in some convenient place, and, as companions pass, send out the rope with lightning speed. The unsuspecting victim finds himself or herself brought to the ground with the line drawn tight about the limbs or neck, while the miscreant takes flight to another part of the grounds. He will steal out and take rides on the reservation horses at night, and is not unfrequently accompanied by some of his girl friends.
    In the schoolroom, the boys wear a staid, solemn look, but the girls write on their slates, flirt and make faces and enjoy themselves generally--when the master is not looking. Farming, carpentering, stock-raising and all manner of work is taught in the industrial departments.
    The schools are for all the world like a big home, a large farm being maintained in connection. Horses and cattle are kept for the use of the pupils. There are also wagons, farming implements, tools and everything necessary to conduct all the departments of the place. There is a local physician, hospital, jail, carpenter and blacksmith shops.
    Flower culture has just been begun at the Yainax school, under the supervision of Mrs R. E. Nickerson, a teacher in the primary department, with considerable success. It is interesting to see the grandson of Paulina, the noted cutthroat chief, picking flowers with young Schonchin, whose grandfather was hanged for murdering members of the peace commission. On a recent trip to the reservation, a noted officer of the Union Army met a party of Indian stalwarts in the road, and inquired where they were going. They informed him that they were on their way to the reservation to pick flowers for Decoration Day.
    The Sabbath and all legal holidays are scrupulously observed. The Methodist Church prevails on this reservation, and a membership of 250 is claimed.
    No Indian is permitted to leave the reservation without a pass, and if he should, he is promptly brought back by the police. Children are not permitted to leave school except in cases of sickness or for a necessary rest.
    As soon as he completes his education or leaves school, the Indian goes upon the land allotted to him and begins his improvement. Stock-raising is most generally the first work taken up. The women engage in housekeeping and other pursuits peculiar to their sex.
    The cost of education is borne entirely by the government, which allows $175 per year for each Indian child in attendance. The food and clothing are substantial. There are Piutes, or Snakes, Modocs, Klamaths and Pit River Indians on this reservation. While there are 1145 of these Indians on the reservation and under government control, there are 1200 Piutes and Pit Rivers at Harney Lake, in Surprise Valley and on Pit River, who should be included in their numbers. An effort is being made to secure their admittance to the reservation.