{"id":4555,"date":"2026-08-02T10:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T18:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/?page_id=4555"},"modified":"2026-08-02T10:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T18:36:11","slug":"before-the-project-the-people-of-this-basin","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/history\/before-the-project-the-people-of-this-basin\/","title":{"rendered":"Before the Project: the people of this Basin"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Before the Project<\/p>\n

The people of this Basin<\/h1>\n

The water was here first. It attracted the people.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n\n

The Klamath, the Modoc and the Yahooskin; the emigrant road that crossed their country; the agreements, the war, and what came after \u2014 on the ground the District serves today. Companion to the District's History<\/a> page.<\/p>\n\n

\u2190 Back to History<\/a><\/p>\n\n

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Time Immemorial \u2013 1882<\/p>\n

The people of this Basin<\/h2>\n\n \n\n

People were here through all of it. The Klamath, the Modoc and the Yahooskin lived along these rivers, lakes and marshes for thousands of years before any of the events below, and their descendants live here now. The name for Link River is theirs: Yulalona<\/strong><\/a>, receding and returning water, for a river that in low years quit flowing altogether in late summer and left fish in the shallows and the mud. Modoc winter villages stood on the shores of Lower Klamath Lake, at the mouth of Lost River, along the eastern shore of Tule Lake, on the upper Lost River and at Clear Lake. What the maps later called reclaimable swamp was somebody's larder. And this is not distant history for the District. Link River runs through the lands the District serves<\/strong>, and so does the Lost River reach where Captain Jack's band camped, where the United States broke its own bargain with them, and where the first shots of the Modoc War were fired. The two rivers that carry most of what follows on this page water the same ground the District delivers to today.<\/p>\n\n \n\n

Link River carries one more story, and it belongs to a Modoc<\/strong> woman. It was written down by her own son. She was born on Link River near the sacred lands of the La-la-cas, and as a child she was called Nan-ook-to-wa<\/strong>, the strange child \u2014 for going alone to the sacred springs, and for her fearlessness at the rocks where Ka-moo-kum-chux had left his footprints. Her father's lodge stood near the outlet of the lake, within sight of the Cascades and within hearing of the rushing water, and it was a favorite pastime of the children to paddle on it.<\/p>\n\n

One day the canoe was drawn into the current \u2014 so swift, the account says, that \u201cthe stoutest-hearted brave would not venture into it.\u201d<\/strong> Her father saw the danger and shouted, and was too late. The canoe was carried into the flood and through the rocky chute. He mounted his horse and rode down the bank \u201cfast as speed could fly,\u201d<\/strong> catching glimpses of the children as they rose on the waves and expecting each time would be the last. Undaunted, Nan-ook-to-wa stood in the canoe, steered right and left past the great boulders, and commanded the other children to calmness. She plied the paddle until the canoe reached the still water of the lower lake, and brought them in safely to meet her father and the friends who had joined the chase.<\/p>\n\n

That day, for the first time, her own people called her Kaitch-ka-na, Wi-ne-ma \u2014 the little woman chief<\/strong>. Twenty years later she stood between her own people and the United States Army as an interpreter through the Modoc War, warned the peace commissioners of the plot against them, and saved a commissioner's life when they did not listen.<\/p>\n\n

Source: Jeff C. Riddle, The Indian History of the Modoc War<\/em>, pp. 202\u2013204, first published 1919, as reproduced in Jim Spindor's \u201cYulalona,\u201d The Trumpeter<\/em> No. 44 (Klamath County Historical Society, 1996). Jeff Riddle was Winema's son.<\/p>\n\n \n

Before the agreement \u2014 raw and unconquered<\/h3>\n\n

The phrase is borrowed from Carrol B. Howe, Unconquered, Uncontrolled: The Klamath Indian Reservation<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n