The Termination of the Klamath Indians

...A 135,000-acre tract of timber-land was set aside in 1959 for the 473 "remaining members," as those Klamaths who opted for a share of the land are called...

...The land was ours to begin with," Dayis insisted repeatedly...

...The answer has got to be that greedy individuals here in Klamath County got together with greedy lawmakers and did us out of our heritage...

...At the time, many of us didn't understand what termination was and we were afraid of any new trust-so most took their shares in cash...

...We felt we belonged to the reservation and to the tribe...

...The government had no right to take it away...

...But when they took our land away, they took our identity away with it...

...A CASE HISTORY The Termination of the Klamath Indians BY JOEL LEVINE Salem Although most members of Oregon's Klamath tribe disapproved of the way 500 Indian militants occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington early this month, they were largely in agreement with the protesters' demands for fundamental changes in the treatment of Indians by the Federal bureaucracy...

...Norris and others sued the Federal government...

...The contrast between the two tribes could hardly be greater: The Klamaths, deprived of their land base and on the verge of extinction, have lost most of their sense of identity...

...In 1964 they favored continuance, but by 1969 the majority had become disillusioned and voted to sever relations with the bank...

...a huge map of the former Klamath reservation with the remaining lands outlined...

...We are trying to increase the options open to remaining members...

...His committee's main hope has been to persuade the government to purchase the entire 135,000-acre tract at its fair market value estimated to be $52 million????thereby keeping it intact and preserving the possibility of a new trust agreement...

...Last July, when the bank declared the 135,000 acres "eligible for public sale," the committee took its case to Federal Court...

...We never got a chance to vote on termination and now the same thing is happening with the remaining lands," he said...

...We want the bank to hold a referendum of the remaining members to see if they prefer setting up a new trust or liquidating the whole thing, and the bank won't do this...

...Those representatives had no authority from the tribe to do so, and the whole thing was illegal...

...The white man's abuse of the Klamath Indian Nation began in 1864, when the U.S...

...According to the trust agreement between the U.S...

...Despite severe arthritis that confines her to a wheelchair, this 53-year-old grandmother of 16 and great-grandmother of two is constantly attending meetings, testifying in courtrooms and visiting welfare offices to defend her fellow Klamaths against discrimination...

...One of the most outspoken critics of termination I met was Marie Norris, president of the Organization of Forgotten Americans...

...And Klamaths born after August 13, 1954, no longer qualified as Indians in the eyes of the law...

...his uncast termination ballot (he had felt that taking cash or going into a new trust was no choice and refused to vote...

...People here think there is some special kind of Indian welfare," Mrs...

...When I asked about this disparity, Davis attributed the Warm Springs' good fortune to their having earned the white man's gratitude by fighting on the side of the U.S...

...In fact, all the Klamaths I talked to looked back on their former reservation lives as idyllic...

...Army during the Modoc War...

...This has created new local pressure for Federal purchase...

...While they were there, the government talked them into accepting Public Law 587????the Klamath Termination Act...

...Under pressure from powerful lumber interests and without opposition from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Congress passed the Termination Acts of 1953-54, closing down selected reservations and, in effect, legislating the end of 60 tribes...

...bibliographical lists...

...Many Klamaths, particularly the old people, are envious of the Warm Springs Indians, their neighbors and former enemies 150 miles to the north...

...Few were fully aware of the special qualities of their culture, for it had been largely destroyed by the impact of a century of white settlement, missionaries, and government wardship...

...We had a place to belong to and someone to take our problems to...

...These "terminated" Klamaths also ceased to be wards of the state...

...all were treated like minors incapable of managing their holdings...

...From the 1920s on, the tribe harvested its forests, using the profits to repay the Federal government the costs of administering the reservation and to provide a reasonable income for its people...

...and proposals describing how the Indians could form a corporation to manage their remaining lands...

...Oregon residents have discovered at the eleventh hour that if the tract passes into private hands, its high purchase price will force the owner to clear-cut the forests instead of managing them on a sustained-yield basis...

...Like many other affected tribes, the Klamaths were caught completely unprepared...

...Nonetheless, they deeply missed the sense of community that existed in the tribe before termination, when they shared their land, and hunted, fished and gathered food communally...

...Indeed, the Klamaths" 18-year-long dispute with the U.S...

...The suit is still pending...

...The decision raised a storm of protest among those who believed that the 1969 vote was an expression of no-confidence in the U.S...

...Unlike the Warm Springs Indians," he told me, "the Klamaths had huge numbers of non-Indians pouring onto their reservation because there was money to be made in the logging operations...

...Besides reducing long-term employment prospects for Klamath County, the sudden appearance of additional tens of millions of board feet a year on local timber markets would have a bad effect on the state's economy...

...Now what are we going to do...

...Davis showed me his brown attache case bearing the motto "Captain Jack Lives...

...In his veto message, Nixon promised to sign separate legislation authorizing the land deal in the next session, neglecting to mention that he had declined to exercise the statutory authority he had to buy the land from July 1969-July 1972...

...Norris, Davis stressed that the tribe had not been allowed to choose its own destiny...

...the Warm Springs Indians, who retained their reservation during the termination era and now own profitable livestock, logging, and resort and convention-center enterprises, have preserved much of their traditional culture...

...In the spring and summer I made several trips to Klamath County and talked with many members of the tribe...

...government over the liquidation of their reservation illustrates the kind of grievances that led to the "Trail of Broken Treaties" demonstration organized by the American Indian Movement...

...Then so-called civilization raised its ugly head and ruined everything for us...

...And what about the children growing up now...

...Indian people are not too interested in material things-e have always been content with just enough to get by on," she says...

...Anyone who wishes to withdraw now and take his cash is more than welcome to do so...

...They don't think we deserved to have so much money...

...Then the per capita payments individualized the Klamaths and destroyed their incentive to work...

...Now we have nothing...

...So far, though...

...Last August they accepted an out-of-court settlement of an additional $23 million, or $12,000 for each terminated Klamath...

...politicians came to feel that Indian reservations and communal living were Communistic, that it was wrong for the government to manage so much land and capital, and that the lifestyle of North America's original inhabitants was "un-American...

...I was happy as a ward of the government...

...Oregon's Congressmen are certain to reintroduce the bill next year, but there is nothing to prevent the bank from selling the land before then...

...We are a lost people in our own aboriginal home...

...The white people haven't accepted us...

...Predominantly non-Indian towns like Chilo-quin and Beatty were established on the reservation, and the violence and improper activities that went on there were disastrous to Indian life...

...What's going to happen to them...

...All we want is a chance to preserve some of our ancient homelands...

...Still, Mrs...

...To the Klamaths, however, economic considerations are secondary...

...they were deemed ready to take their places as ordinary citizens...

...Army forced Chief Lalakes to sign a treaty giving up 12 million acres of its homelands in Oregon and northern California...

...While we talked, he kept reaching into his attache case and handing me more documents to support his arguments, until I was nearly buried under the written record of the Klamaths' tribulations...

...Despite the loss of another 138,-000 acres to white homesteaders in the late 1800s, within a few generations the Klamath timber holdings were greater than those of many European countries...

...In exchange, the tribe was granted perpetual rights to a one-million-acre reservation near Crater Lake, territory considered worthless because the timber covering three-fourths of it had no market value at the time...

...According to our tribal by-laws, there should have been a referendum...

...The government has never let us have one...

...Congressional Record transcripts of dozens of Federal hearings on the tribe...

...He is reported to feel that the government already owns too much property in the West and that private industry should take it over...

...The administrators then announced that the bank had no alternative other than to liquidate the tribal assets and distribute the cash to the remaining members...

...and a picture of the Modoc chief who led his people ow part of the Klamath Nation-in the 1872-73 Modoc War against white encroachment on the tribal lands...

...Each of the 2,133 enrolled members was offered the choice of taking a cash payment of $43,000 as reparation or retaining a share of the land in a trust administered by the U.S...

...In the last session of Congress, Oregon's delegation attached a Klamath land purchase rider to an Interior Department appropriations bill establishing data collection centers around the country...

...Hiroto Zakoji, a Bureau of Indian Affairs official in Portland, sees the Klamath Nation's relative affluence as having led to its ruin in a different way...

...Why was it necessary to throw the Klamaths off the reservation to manage the timber...

...Arguing that they were cheated out of several million dollars????the original cash payment amounted to about $114 per acre-Mrs...

...In the wake of the McCarthy era, many U.S...

...Department of the Interior and the bank, every five years the remaining members were to vote on whether or not to continue the trust...

...President Nixon has refused to let the U.S...

...Had there not been so much money involved, Zakoji noted, the Klamaths might not have lost their land????And their identity...

...Bank of Oregon and not a mandate to dissolve the trust...

...Forest Service buy the land...

...Davis was not optimistic about the likelihood of future Klamath control...

...You can't have a viable tribe with many members living off the reservation while others stay on and lead a more traditional life...

...We have nowhere to go...

...As had Mrs...

...The attache case was stuffed full of documents about the Klamaths: copies of the 1864 Treaty, the 1954 Termination Act and the 1959 Trust Agreement...

...We were doing it ourselves before termination...

...Norris' main concern, however, is not the monetary loss involved...

...Most of the rest of the reservation was turned into the Winema National Forest...

...In the resulting confusion and bitterness, 77.5 per cent chose Joel Levine, a free-lance writer, formerly worked for the Office of Economic Opportunity in Oregon...

...I spent another evening talking to Elnathan Davis, president of the Committee to Save the Remaining Klamath Lands...

...No one was given the option of possessing his own land individually...

...Norris thinks the tribe should have been given the chance to form its own corporation to manage the land, thereby providing the Klamath tribe with a continuing source of income...

...Today, a scant 13 years later, every vestige of their old way of life has disappeared...

...They are the ones who have lost everything...

...Termination was the biggest swindle since the white man bought Manhattan Island," she told me, launching into her account of what happened: "In 1954 we sent three tribal representatives back to Washington to ask for per capita payments of $250 out of our own money held by the U.S...

...Mrs...

...About 30 shareholders banded together into the Committee to Save the Remaining Klamath Lands...

...the cash settlement-often quickly spent...

...Norris, on the other hand, said she believes the Klamaths' plight stems from their "bad public image": They had been receiving per capita payments from their rich timber holdings since the '20s, and whites resented the fact that even during the Depression Klamaths could afford such luxuries as new cars...

...They have no land, no money, no identity as Indians, and they often lack the skills or education to make it in white society...

...his committee's position papers...

...Treasury...

...Years ago when someone got mad at an Indian here, they said: 'Why don't you go back to your reservation?' Well, at least we had a reservation to go back to...

...An active man in his late 40s, he has 10 children, five born before the August 1954 cutoff date and thus recognized as remaining members, and five born afterward into a kind of limbo?legally non-Indian but the children, brothers and sisters of Indians...

...The only choice we had was to accept our termination shares in cash or in land to be put into a group trust...

...National Bank of Oregon...

...Now that the reservation is a national forest, the income from the timber is shared between local timber companies and the government...

...legal briefs of present and past lawsuits...

...Norris added...