Carroll Howe

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Carroll B. Howe Oral History Interview

Interviewer and Date: Stephen R. Mark, Crater Lake National Park Historian

Interview Location and Date: Carrol Howe’s residence south of Klamath Falls, Oregon, January 23, 1992

Transcription: Transcribed by Chris Prout, July 1997

Biographical Summary (from the interview introduction)

Carrol Howe has been a prominent resident of Klamath County since the mid 1930s, when he began a teaching career. His role in the public sector eventually expanded to being a school principal, then Klamath County Superintendent of Schools, and finally state representative. A farmer in retirement, he maintains a keen interest in the county’s archeology and history. Mr. Howe can be credited with igniting widespread interest in the past and present of Klamath County, largely through writing and publishing a highly successful series of books. Died 1998. Crater Lake National History Association board member 1982-87.

Materials Associated with this interview on file at the Dick Brown library at Crater Lake National Park’s Steel Visitor Center

Taped interview; loaned photos for copying; file includes a limited amount of correspondence and a print from slide taken during the interview. Most of the interview is captured on the following transcription, except for a preliminary portion where he showed me his collection of photographs and artifacts. A number of photographs were subsequently copied for the park’s museum collection with Mr. Howe’s permission. The park library also benefited from our meeting, as we later obtained copies of all his published work.

To the reader:

Carrol Howe has been a prominent resident of Klamath County since the mid 1930s, when he began a teaching career. His role in the public sector eventually expanded to being a school principal, then Klamath County Superintendent of Schools, and finally state representative. A farmer in retirement, he maintains a keen interest in the county’s archeology and history. Mr. Howe can be credited with igniting widespread interest in the past and present of Klamath County, largely through writing and publishing a highly successful series of books.

This interview took place on a brisk January morning at Mr. Howe’s residence south of Klamath Falls. Most of the interview is captured on the following transcription, except for a preliminary portion where he showed me his collection of photographs and artifacts. A number of photographs were subsequently copied for the park’s museum collection with Mr. Howe’s permission. The park library also benefited from our meeting, as we later obtained copies of all his published work.

Stephen R. Mark

August 1997

Crater Lake National Park, National Park Service, Crater Lake, Oregon 97604

 This is an oral history interview with Carrol B. Howe in Klamath Falls on January 23, 1992.

Why did you come to Ashland to go to normal school?

For one thing, I had a sister living in Ashland. For another, I wanted to play football there. I realized that, in those days, you could get into teaching with a two-year degree. Not having much money, I was in a hurry to get work after I got out of high school.

What degrees did you earn from the University of Oregon?

At the University of Oregon, I finished a bachelor’s degree in 1936 and a master’s degree in 1942.

Did you lay any groundwork for your later archeological interests while at the University of Oregon?

I became interested in archeology before I went to the University of Oregon, but I took work with Dr. Cressman there and I carried on conversations with him and exchanged information. I presented the university with a number of what I considered to be significant Indian artifacts. Later, I directed him as to where I thought the sites were for ancient people in the Lower Klamath Lake region. He followed up with studies, archeological excavations, and then he published a book on that material.

That was his Carnegie [Institution of Washington] book?

I think it was. I had one and I loaned it to somebody, and I forget who I loaned it to and they forget that they had it. I don’t think they’d steal it. I also had a book that I loaned that was called, “Early Man in Oregon,” which I think was his first publication of any size.

That was the one that was published by University of Oregon about 1940?

I was interested in archeology in the early 1930’s. I had a little Indian boy in my sixth-grade class by the name of Charlie Cowan.  He had a bunch of artifacts he’d found when he was out herding sheep. He didn’t know anything about them and neither did I and neither did anybody else. I thought that was a shame. We had probably 2,000 Indians in this region, and you could find out all about the Pueblo Indians and the horse Indians of the [Great] Plains and everything else, but virtually nothing about the local Klamath and Modocs. I decided I’d find out as much as I could.

Then I got to thinking that we ought to have something published that we could use in the schools. That’s when I wrote the first book. I’m really too lazy to write a book. It’s a lot of work. But I thought we should have something published, and so the first book was calledAncient Tribes of the Klamath Country.  It’s been an outstanding success. They’re getting ready to run it through the fifth printing now. I told them to give it up a long time ago, that it wouldn’t sell, but it’s still selling.

 That was the one that was published by University of Oregon about 1940?

I was interested in archeology in the early 1930’s. I had a little Indian boy in my sixth-grade class by the name of Charlie Cowan.  He had a bunch of artifacts he’d found when he was out herding sheep. He didn’t know anything about them and neither did I and neither did anybody else. I thought that was a shame. We had probably 2,000 Indians in this region, and you could find out all about the Pueblo Indians and the horse Indians of the [Great] Plains and everything else, but virtually nothing about the local Klamath and Modocs. I decided I’d find out as much as I could.

Then I got to thinking that we ought to have something published that we could use in the schools. That’s when I wrote the first book. I’m really too lazy to write a book. It’s a lot of work. But I thought we should have something published, and so the first book was called Ancient Tribes of the Klamath Country.  It’s been an outstanding success. They’re getting ready to run it through the fifth printing now. I told them to give it up a long time ago, that it wouldn’t sell, but it’s still selling.

Same publisher, Binford and Mort?

Binford and Mort published that, and they also published the second book that I had. It is in the second printing now, and they raised the price on it. I don’t think the darn thing’s going to sell very well from here on out. The editorial process involves so much time and nitpicking and what not. The third book that I did I published myself. By that time, I had enough courage to think that it would pay for itself. That was one called Sagebrush to Shakespeare.

The newest of your books?

No, it’s not the newest. The newest one is called, Frontier Stories of the Klamath Country.  It has a section in it on Crater Lake. I’ll show it to you. I have one that’s at the printers now called, Unconquered, Uncontrolled: The Klamath Indian Reservation. It has nothing about Crater Lake, except that Crater Lake is adjacent to the Indian reservation.

I haven’t seen much in the literature about just the reservation itself. Is it the first study?

No, it’s not the first one. I made a lot of tapes with Charlie Ogle, who was born there and grew up there on the reservation. And I had tapes with Ida [Momyer] Odell, who went there as a teenager and her father [Henry Momyer] was the Indian trader (1). Then, Harvey Wright, when I was in the state department of education, was a good friend of mine. He was the head of Indian education for the state of Oregon and was very active in [the] process of preparing for the termination of the tribe (2). I felt sort of an obligation, [to] have all this information published. So it’s in press at Bend at Maverick Press.

I have had courage enough to finance the last three of this myself. It took me about three years to reach a break even on that doggone book Sagebrush to Shakespeare.  I’ll never again have a book with the name of “Shakespeare” on the front of it!

 Do you get help for distribution or do you have to do that all yourself?

Binford, of course, has a catalog, and they’re distributors. The others I have handled myself. I think the first three books have been approved for sale at the [Crater Lake] Natural History Association, but I don’t think they’re selling any of them there.

We have in the past, but I don’t think that’s [the cases] currently.

They approved Sagebrush, but I don’t think they’re selling it. Every time I talk to them, they say, “Yes, give us a sample.” And I gave away so many samples and I don’t know what happened to them.

Sometimes they sell five, and they sort of see how it goes.

I don’t know that they would be big sellers, but they sell everywhere else, [at least] moderately. When a new book hits the deck, they sell a lot of them in Klamath Falls because that’s what they’re about. I wouldn’t have written them otherwise. If I wanted to write a book to make money, I’d write about something in Chicago or New York.

About your background… What led you to go from where you were born in Brownsville [OR] to here in Klamath County?

I never went to school in the [Klamath] county. I was at Ashland and the president of the school called me in. I as getting along toward the middle of my graduation year. The president of the school was J.E. Churchill and he was also very active in placing the graduates. He called me in and he said “Where do you want to teach school?” and I couldn’t think of anyplace I wanted to teach. I knew I didn’t dare go back to my home town and try to teach. I had a sister teaching here, so I said Klamath County. They called me in for an interview. Fred Peterson, the superintendent, they said, is coming over at such and such a time and you come in for an interview. So I borrowed a suit of clothes from a friend of mine and went down for the interview. Shortly after that, he sent a contract over to teach there for $100 a month, which was good money at that time. I let it lay around, and lost it, and then I found it. I was interested in coaching. Of course, I thought I was an athlete. I got that contract and I was glad to find it because there were about two teachers for every job in those days.

It was about 1930?

1930 I started. I went to Weyerhaeser Camp Two during the summer. A friend of mine got me a job there and we played baseball for Weyerhaeser. Then I came and taught at Alltamont for five years. Following that, I went back to school for a while. I went to school off and on every time I’d get any money, until [I earned] the masters degree, which was 1942. My experiences in teaching were very gratifying. I was in the state department of education, which was the least gratifying job that I had, and from there they wanted me to come back down as a school superintendent. I was in that for 12 years.

In 1960, I decided that I was going to be a farmer. I’d been in the job for 12 years, and the neighbors decided that I was a statesman and so they got me to run for the state legislature. I didn’t think I’d have a chance of getting elected. I was a Republican and Republicans were not being elected at that time. I didn’t even buy space in the voter’s pamphlet. I surprised me and I was elected to that [office] and was there for 12 years.

 As a state representative?

Yes. I gave that up about 1972.

You retired at that time?

I quit the state legislature. I didn’t think I was an author, but it turned out that way. I had this farm all paid off before I went to the legislature and I discovered that a 160-acre farm would not support the necessary machinery. You had to have a bigger operation than that, so I sold it. I was fortunate enough to take advantage of in the inflation that took place from the time I bought it until the time I sold it.

Did you farm in the time that you were away from Salem?

I tried to, and the neighbors kept me in it, but I couldn’t serve in the legislature and be a farmer. I didn’t want to impose on their kindness, and so I leased the farm land for the rest of the time I was in the legislature. The terms of the legislature kept getting longer and longer and into the farming season. Of course, it was only every two years. In the meantime, I was able to do a lot of archeological research in Mexico and Arizona in trying to trace any likenesses that there might be between the local Indians and the others of the west. That was, of course, a lot of fun.

Did you stay in contact with Dr. Cressman?

Yes, I did. In the 1930’s, I think it was about 1936, I was in the blown off part of the Lower Klamath Lake. It  was a virtual desert, the whole thing, at that time. I found some artifacts in association with fossil bones. So I kept them, and I kept them separate, and I gave the university some of the bones and most of the artifacts that were associated with them. I thought what has happened here is that the wind erosion has blown off so much that these artifacts have worked themselves down to where they’re in association with the fossils. The bones proved to camel bones. No one had any idea that there were people and camels here at the same time, so I didn’t even pretend that they were in association. I think I wrote about it a little bit in that first book that they were together, and I think I said that they probably were not. Before I did the next book, I called Cressman on the telephone. His book published by the University of Utah had come out on ancient man (3). I thought, I’m going to check this out with him. I said, “Do you think that there is any possibility that there were people here at the same time that camel was?” And he said, “In my mind, there is no question that those Indian ate that camel.” So there you see…

Yes, I haven’t seen much on the megafauna in association with early man.

[Do] you see those [artifacts] on the left side of that board up there?

Yes.

Well, those are ones that were out there where that fossil camel was. The one that I removed I sent to Sonoma State University. They made an obsidian hydration test on it and they said it was 10,000 years old. Of course, that would put it with the camel. This was added proof that there were people here when the camels were around.

 Who have been your most memorable oral history interviewees?

My most memorable history interviewees were Ida Odell, Charlie Ogle, and Dr. Cressman.

And when did you interview Cressman?

I talked with him at various times during the 1930’s and otherwise, like telephone calls. I have interviewed Mel Aikens, who is head of the Department [of Anthropology at the University of Oregon]. I have been in touch with him and helped him map archeological sites. He was doing excavations last summer and he sent some maps down and wanted me to located sites on them for him. There was a man named Jenkins, who has their university collections there, and he showed them to me and I have interviewed him. In terms of history, all the people in Sagebrush to Shakespeare [were memorable interviews].Some of them were very good friends of mine and practically all of them are dead now. Some of them, like Ed Geary and Nelson Reed, played a very important part in the history of this country here. Nelson Reed was the head of the water study commission that came up with the Klamath River Compact.  Jim Kerns, who I think is still living, was on that commission. But that is a very, very important document as far as Klamath County is concerned.

That’s the one which apportioned the water from upstream?

That gave the priority [dates] on the Klamath River water. And it was ratified by two states and the Congress. So it’s pretty solid document, and of course, they’re picking at it all the time in one way or another.

Some of the fisheries controversies would affect it.

Who knows snail darters? I don’t think there was ever any sucker fishery on the Klamath River after it left Klamath Lake. But that’s neither here nor there. It is a very important document. Jim Kerns is still living, and he is the only one I know who was on that. But Hal Ogle was a good friend of mine. He was born and was raised on the Indian reservation. I have interviews with some Indians, and three of them are in this next book that’s coming out. Dibbon Cook was tribal secretary and he’s friend of mine. I interviewed him. I have interviewed the tribal chief, the head of it, Seldon Kirk. And a lady by the name of Ima Jiminez, [who] was a 100 percent Klamath Indian. She’s the only person I’ve ever interviewed who actually was in subterranean pit house when she was a girl. I have a story about that in this book called Unconquered, Uncontrolled.

How did Frank Howe get involved with the USGS sounding expedition of 1886? Did he get down to the lake at that time? Was he a part of any other topographic mapping survey?

That’s about Uncle Frank. His family lived in Massachusetts, including my father. When my father was about 14 years old, Uncle Frank, who was much older, came out here on sort of an exploratory thing. He was almost a frontiersman. He got a job as cook for the army crew, and he killed a deer up on the Rim. I suppose he was cook and hunter for them. And he killed this deer there and….

So he would have been with Captain Dutton?

I don’t know. He was in the first survey party.

In the first survey part?

His would have been in the 1880’s.

Okay. So he would have been attached to some of the topographic surveys?

It was an army party, but he was not in the army. He was a cook. He went back east and persuaded my grandfather to bring the family west. So they put all of our furniture and all of our belongings, everything they had, on an immigrant car. They just lived on it and they had a stove and they cooked and supplied their needs on this immigrant car. The railroad would bring them as far as was convenient, then they’d leave them there, and they’d pick them up again. They did not homestead. They bought a ranch in the Willamette Valley near Corvallis. Between Corvallis and Albany there was an electric railway station called Granger. That’s where their first homestead was.

What do you remember from your initial journey to Crater Lake and subsequent visits?

This was a family party in 1922. I was about 12 years old. Uncle Frank, his son, two of his brothers, and one other guy were among the party. We traveled in two Model T Fords.

Did you go down to Medford?

We went south to Ashland. We came over from Ashland in one day and made it as far as Fort Klamath. Then from there we went up to the lake and camped in a tent. It was a marvelous experience. They had a quartet that entertained there. They were summer rangers from the University of Kentucky, and they sang beautifully. They were recruited, probably, for that talent.

 Yes, we have a picture of them.

Yes, and I’ll never forget their singing. They were great entertainers. I don’t remember much about the buildings; expect that my Uncle George almost walked my legs off. My brother Harry went down into the lake, and they had a lunch there. There was a trail, and he went down and caught fish. He caught trout there, casting a spinner out from Wizard Island. Those fish had a great big head, and they come down like a snake. It was before they had introduced those Cyclops freshwater shrimp in there. These were pretty good sized trout, maybe like that long, and they’d have a big old head.

So they didn’t have much to live on, then?

No. I think they were probably planted there, without doubt.

I know Zane Grey was there a few years before you were in 1922, and he talked about how lean these fish were.

Yes. If you don’t have a picture of those fish, I might be able to get one from my brother.

Yes, I’d like to see those because we don’t have many early fish pictures other than…it’s always a string of fish but it’s too far away to get a really solid look at them.

I don’t know. Those that Odell has in that picture should look like that, but I don’t know if they do or not. I don’t think they show up. He might have tried to disguise the physical condition of the fish.

My mother painted some beautiful pictures of Crater Lake. It was a big thing in the whole state of Oregon. It was a tedious road over the Greensprings, and there were several places we stopped and put water in the radiators on the other side of the mountains. Those old cars boil up there. A lot of travel was low gear.

Did you go up there a lot when you were teaching school?

No. I never did. I had given to me, from [the University of] Oregon, a piece of pumice that Uncle Frank found floating. A floating rock was a big thing in those days. But, there are billions of them around, and I don’t think that I ever did keep it in my collection. The only unique thing was that he found it floating there in that first army party [of 1886].

 Have you heard anything about the sheep and cattle drives that took place through the Crater Lake area before the present park was established?

There weren’t many deer, and the bear, of course, came in to feed on the garbage. There were lots of bear around there at the time that they were throwing the garbage out.

What do you know about the W.F. Arant family? How was he connected to the Republican Party in Klamath County?

I couldn’t tell you whether he was a Republican or not. I think Joey is a Democrat, but that doesn’t mean anything. Vernie was his grandson, I guess. He was the kid in that story that they dangled over the edge of the lake.

Franklin Arant was the first superintendent, and he was very happy there. They wanted him to go and be superintendent at Yellowstone National Park. He wouldn’t do it. So he quit rather than accept a transfer to Yellowstone, which is probably the prime national park in the world. He just didn’t want to leave! His son, Vernie who is now dead, told me that.

Are there very many of the Arants still in the Klamath area?

Yes. I know of two. One of them lives down the road here. He’s a janitor at the Henley High School, and one of them, Delbert, is janitor at the Mazama High School. Joey Arant, the name’s not Joe, moved pipe for me on the ranch here. And Dorman Lee was a student of my wife who taught at…she’s in California, I think. Then there’s a young Vernie, who is the oldest boy, and I don’t know if he’s here or not. I kind of think he’s around here somewhere. They are very pleasant kids, very pleasant people.

I suppose they go up to the park every once in a while to have a look around.

I wouldn’t know about that.

 How did Henry Momyer become Crater Lake’s first park ranger?  What did he do after leaving the National Park Service in 1920? What did Ida Odell do in the park when she worked there in 1917?

Well, Momyer was the Indian trader at the reservation.

That part I didn’t know until I read it in your book.

Yes. His daughter, Ida, told me that her father was a man who had itchy feet. He never did like to stay in the same place very long. They lived in Oakland, California. I’m not sure but maybe he went to Oakland, California, after he worked for the park service. But he was always looking for something over the hill. She said he had itchy feet. He lived in two or three different places in California. He lived down on the Oregon border near Merrill. He had a store there and he moved from there to become Indian trader. He bought merchandise and he opened the store on the Indian Reservation.

At the agency….

Yes, at the agency. He sold it and then went into the park service. But she said he was the first uniformed ranger at Crater Lake Park.

He and Arant would both have a vest and they’d wear the interior badge.

I have a bigger picture of his face that’s a professional photograph. I looked for it, and I couldn’t find it in my files. I wondered maybe if I hadn’t given it to the park.

We do have a couple of pictures both of him and of Ida’s mother that are fair-sized photos.

I think I gave it to the park. I gave the park some other pictures, too.

Did you know O.C. or Elmer Applegate? Where did Ivan run this sheep?

Ivan ran sheep on the Clear Lake country. He supplied Dan Murphy. In that book there’s a chapter about life in a sheep camp, and it’s about Daniel Murphy’s sheep. He was, I guess, financed and set up by Ivan Applegate, and he runs sheep over the Clear Lake country. Later, he bought property down in the Clear Lake country. That’s the Clear Lake in Modoc County (California). He was quite a guy, Ivan Applegate, but I didn’t know him. I did know O.C. Applegate to say hello to him on the street. He was a well-known character who’d run around with his buckskin coat on, long beard. He was a very colorful guy.

He would have been very old by that time.

Yes, he was pretty old. His daughter was a neighbor of ours. Her husband shot our cat, which was killing their chickens. Her name was Rachel Applegate Good, and she is the author of that rather large book called History of Klamath County. I leaned upon her for some of the material in the last book that I prepared. I have in there a poem that O.C. Applegate wrote about Indians. But Charlie Ogle said he was a very pleasant person, and he went about things in a way that was easy to get along with the Indians because he could use their language. Charlie had a lot of admiration for him as a superintendent. Following him, there was an army man who carried a gun all the time. I guess he used a very different method of supervising the reservation. Charlie’s tape is the thing that I would rely on for that information.

 I know O.C Applegate Jr. made a tape at Oregon Historical Society that’s fairly extensive. I was interested in Elmer because he was the park botanist for years.

No, I did not know him. But Dan Murphy was a great admirer of Ivan Applegate and I guess he was a hero in the Modoc War. He did a lot of service for the government and he could talk with the Indians.

Have you known any of the Crater Lake superintendents? Did you know Don Fisher as a teacher and NPS employee?

I know Don Fisher very well. And I have known others. Borgman is a good friend of mine. He’s still around here (4). He was in the Rotary Club. Then there was a rather small guy, very friendly man named Jim Rouse (5). He’d come to our meetings of our committee. Fisher was a hands-on sort of an administrator, kind of into everything. I think he was involved in establishing the antelope herd at the Modoc Lava Beds National Monument. I believe he was active at that time. He was a guy that was a very good friend of mine.

Don Fisher was a teacher at the Klamath Union High School, a teacher of history. He was vitally interested in national monument. He wrote some things, and I have never read them. I don’t know where they are, but he wrote quite a bit. He was head of the Lava Beds and I applied for a summer job there in 1934. I wanted a job and gave references, but I never did hear anything of it. I didn’t get the job and I went back to school. I took a master’s degree during the summer session. Then, about the time I was packed and ready to leave for Eugene, he said I’d been hired. But I didn’t know it and I had gone too far down the road. I might have ended up as a park district employee because I was very, very intrigued with Lava Beds Monument, wanted to work there, and need the money.

That was before there was much development there?

Very little development. There were some roads, but no guide service or anything. Judd Howard was the old boy that built his life around the Lave Beds. There, that’s him. That’s his camera. I gave the park service down there a lot of his pictures.

He promoted the monument?

He did everything that he could. He took pictures. He lived down there. The rates were eating his food. He made this map. I gave to them, too. This tells all about Judd Howard and gives a lot of his dates that he went there- his journals. These are pictures from the Judd Howard collection and gives a lot of his correspondence.

 I noticed his address was in Klamath Falls.

Yes. He had an Indian that would go down there with him. This is not on Crater Lake and you may not want this on your tape.

I always think of the Lava Beds as a good way to understand a lot of the story at Crater Lake.

I am happy to sell you any of these books that you want that I have. I was too stupid to keep copies of my first book, and that darn thing is selling in hardcover for $25 now.

I’ve got a paperback edition of it.

It sold for $4.50 when it came out, and I was glad to kiss them goodbye. So many books never even sell the first printing, and I didn’t have much confidence in my ability as an author.

So much for Don Fisher.

He died young, didn’t he?

Oh yes. And his widow married Hal Ogle, who was on the museum commission with me.

Did he have anything to do with thee Klamath County Museum? There seemed to be a lot of supporters in town of it who gave artifacts.

Yes, we gave them everything that’s in there. We bought the Payne collection, which is very valuable. We raised most of the money to buy the Payne collection for the museum. Most of the artifacts in there have been given or loaned to them by amateur collectors. If Frank Payne were alive today, he’d probably be in jail for picking up artifacts on Lower Klamath Lake bed.

I’ve heard of him through Cressman, and then his wife did some writing about Crater Lake.

I don’t know about Crater Lake (6). She wrote a book on the Modoc War called Captain Jack: Modoc Renegade. I don’t think Frank had a great deal of formal education, but he was a very astute scholar in terms of learning everything he could. He had a little bit too much imagination, but a lot of his conclusions and materials have held together pretty well. You’d look out on Lower Klamath Lake and there would be so much dust that it’d obscure the sun to a certain extent.

And that seemed to happen fairly fast, after the railroad cut off the flow of water.

Yes.

Since it was a very shallow lake to start with.

There was a light, humus-type stuff when the bed blew off. It uncovered all these very ancient Indian camps. Lots of people, like Frank Payne and I, saved that material and a lot of it’s in the museum. And a lot, like this, has been studied. It wasn’t entirely a case of vandalism, but the professional community of archaeologists probably would consider me as a vandal for having salvaged all this stuff. I’ve spent a helluva lot of money getting it and having it tested and so on.

 You worked very closely with the Forest Service and BLM people in the past.

Yes, and I still do. I can’t say that [of BLM] because I don’t know of anyone in the BLM that wouldn’t perhaps rather see me in prison. But I work with archaeologists from three different national forests- Modoc and Klamath- and I’ve given papers at their professional meetings. So I don’t have an antagonism, a built-in antagonism, for them. But I know amateur collectors who have important information, and they wouldn’t give them the time of day. They are so nasty in their description of anyone who hunts this stuff or preserves it.

A lot of this was done before any of the laws were ever on the books.

It was. I’ll bet you 90 percent of the information that archaeologists have accumulated has been a result of some amateur somewhere.

Cressman talks about that a lot. He depended on amateur collectors.

Marie Wormington, the dean of all the people on the study of ancient man, gives a lot of credit to amateurs. I have a piece that I sent to Marie Wormington for identification. It was the first Clovis point, you might say elephant hunter point that was ever found in this region and positively identified. Since then, I have accumulated pictures of maybe eight or 10 of them. So, we know there were elephant hunters around there. I’m waiting for somebody to find an elephant bone with one sticking in it.

They were dated at roughly the same time as the camel period?

The camel lasted a little longer around here than the elephant. That one point was dated at 10,000 years. I think that is a pretty good date, and it was with the camel bones. Arnold Shotwell, who was a paleontologist at the museum at the University of Oregon, and a master in the identification of animal bones, was a pretty good friend of mine. I was on the museum commission, and he was a great deal of help. Whenever we’d get a bone, we’d send it up to Arnold. He’d clean it up, date it and send it back to us. It was the only way that you could have a real scientific basis for knowing what these animals were around here. The county museum has a display of bones and stuff that I put together, and most of them are identified by Arnold Shotwell.

The Klamath County Museum?

Yes.

 When were you on the Crater Lake Natural History Association board? How did it operate at that time?

I can’t remember the years I was on the Crater Lake Natural History Association board. It’s probably in their records. I think they appointed me and I believe it was during the time that Jim Rouse was superintendent. I carried on until about five years ago. I had this heart surgery and I didn’t know how many years I had left. I figured I better concentrate on the things that I was trying to do rather than going to meetings, although I enjoyed my associations on the board.

Were most of the meetings in the park at that time?

Most of them were. We met once or twice at the college at Ashland. We met once at the Shaw Library here (7). But most of the meetings were in the park. It was kind of a nice occasion to get together.

You mentioned that you were on the Lava Beds board. Was there anyone else that also had an overlap between the two boards?

No, I don’t think so. I was on that board first. They used to ask me to go down and put on a program to orient their summer people. I had slide programs. They called it a VIP program, Volunteers in Parks, or something like that. I went down at least three or four different years and showed them this slide program. I think that was before the amateur archaeologist got such a bad reputation as a vandal. I’m not sure why they discontinued the program. I always had a fine relationship with Gary Hathway (8). I gave him various stuff, and I gave the park the Howard pictures. I talked another fellow out of them. I would like to see a monument. I have a little money that I would be willing to put together to see a monument or a memorial of some kind for Judd Howard.

Yes, I’ve never seen anything, at least my trips down there that mentioned him.

I think Doris Bowen told me that they don’t allow memorials any more (9).

There are guidelines. The thing can be restrictive, but there are ways of doing that.

I could get volunteers to go down and build a native stone pyramid and get a brass plate made dedicated to the memory of Judd Howard. It wouldn’t disturb the natural…and we could put it near this old cave that… he lived in a cave down there a lot of the time.

 Oh, he did?

He didn’t have a car. He would walk from Merrill. But I’ve been so heavily occupied, and my wife’s health has not been all that great. I haven’t pursued this. But I’m going to talk to Doris again, and if she rejects it outright or if Gary can’t put something together I’m going to put something in the Klamath County Museum of it. I took a deduction on the pictures, and I cut about $60 off my income tax as a result of it. I gave that [for a memorial fund]. It’s in the historical society money, but I thought that would be a start toward a memorial for Judd. He had no children. It’s somewhat of a tragedy, the way his life turned out in dealing with Forest Service (10).

When did he die, in the 30’s?

No, he died after that. I knew him only slightly. Here’s a letter dated in 1939 from the University of California. He gave the University of California an awful lot of Indian artifacts. He was born in 1880, and came west later.

Did he live in Klamath Falls?

Yes. That’s his mining scale. These are some of the people he corresponded with in getting information together. He was really a big asset in the development. The Forest Service really wasn’t all that interested in making a park out of that, I don’t think.

Where was the Melhase place in the Wood River Valley? InSagebrush and Shakespeare, you talk about the Indian doctor and the Melhase place.

Hey, I got a picture of that Indian doctor in this last book that’s in print. Old Snipe and his wife. I don’t know where the Melhase place was. I suppose it was near the joining of the river up there somewhere, but I don’t have any idea. [Alfred] “Cap” Collier was the one that told me the story about Old Snipe.

How was Rocky Point developed? Was it initiated by the Harriman Lodge?

I think Flyshacker and Sam Johnson developed the Harriman Lodge. That’s S.O. Johnson right there, I think. They came here after the railroad and there’s a whole chapter on Harriman Lodge.

They were the ones that controlled the steamers that went across the lake from Klamath Falls to Rocky Point.

Did they? They tried to get the railroad, the street car. But somebody else got it, and so they got these-the automobile was being invented then. And the street car went out of business…that’s Becky Johnson. She’s still alive.

 What led to the establishment of Kirk, Oregon?

I know something about Kirk. It was the end of the railroad. Do you get the Klamath newspaper?

Occasionally.

There will be a special issue come out. And I took a picture up there. It’s [Kirk] where the Southern Pacific Railroad ended and the logging railroads took off. In those days, railroad logging was the big thing.

In the teens, when they went and took a lot of that pine out of there.

Yes. There were four or five companies that did railroad logging. Algoma had a road come right over the rim up there. An engineer developed a technique whereby the loaded car coming down on a cable would pull the other car up. They had it wrapped around a pulley or something. I’ve seen them letting logs down and pulling cars up with the other one.

That must have been how they did it on steep grades.

They had a locomotive called a Shay, and it was a gear driven deal rather than the type you see now. They had those Shays, and there is a picture, in this special edition, of a Shay at Kirk, operated by a man named O’Calligan. He was later killed out at Bly. This old Shay was slow, but it was gear-driven and it would go up a much steeper grade than an ordinary locomotive. And of course, logs always go downhill. There’s no money pulling logs uphill.

Why was the name “Natron Cutoff” for that part of the railroad line?

I lived at Weyerhaeser Camp Two when I first came over here. We had an old Shay there that we used for laying track. My brother lived at Kirk, and he was in the bridge building crew. He was a bridge carpenter. He lived at Kirk in tent. They were building bridges and culverts and whatever for this Natron Cutoff that went to Eugene.

That’s the present route of the Southern Pacific.

Yes.

Why was it called Natron?

I don’t know why they called it that. They should have built Interstate 5 on this side because that’s the best one for the trucks and everything. But it was a political arrangement to place I-5 on the west side.

Do you recall seeing any documentation of John Muir’s visit there [Rocky Point/ Harriman Lodge] in August 1908?

I don’t know anything about John Muir. In this new book, there’s a little section or two on Joaquin Miller, the Poet of the Sierras. There’s a little story on Joaquin Miller, where O.C. Applegate got him to come up and talk at the campfire up at the reservation. An Indian woman [Polly] came out of the brush on her horse and jumped over the fire, and they all disappeared. There’s a picture of “Cap” Applegate and Joaquin Miller in that new book coming out. You should see that I’m trying to sell you one of them.

Do you think the relocation of what is now Highway 97 in 1940 changed the migration patterns of the antelope from Fort Rock to the Pumice Desert?

No. We had an antelope. We saw it three or four different days right out here in the field.

How popular was the Ghost Dance among the Klamath?

I have a book on the Ghost Dance that Ida Odell gave me. So it was practiced somewhat here, but I don’t think it was popular.

I know it started at Walker Lake [Nevada] and it spread from there.

Yes.

I hadn’t heard of it being done here.

Well, it was done here, but I don’t think there were very many advocates of the Ghost Dance. The conjurers, the medicine men, were losing their power at that time. There was somewhat of a measure to revive that power, but the missionaries were taking over the religious beliefs of the Indians here.

 Have you been to Oklahoma to visit the Modoc residents there?

I’ve never been in Oklahoma. I have friends, Cheewa James, father, I think was in Oklahoma. And her father was quite an athlete.

I know that she worked for a park service at Lava Beds for a number of years.

Yes, she did. She’s not a very primitive Indian, to be honest with your. But she takes pride in her [ancestry]. I think she’s one/fourth Indian or something like that. I got a picture of her in one of these books. I can’t remember what’s in them.

Judd Howard got hold of Schonchin and took him down to the Lave Beds. He got quite a lot of information from Peter Schonchin. Peter Schonchin was the youngest of the warriors. He was about 15 years old at the time of the Modoc War, and he was in it. Judd would take him down there and get information from him about conditions there. I think some of that was in the book. I never did know Peter Schonchin or any other Indian who was actually in the war.

How close are the Klamath sweat lodges to Crater Lake? Is the one at Algoma still in existence?

Crater Lake National Park was really not used much by the Indians, I don’t think. They were marsh people. I used to think fish were their principal food and then, after we did the Nightfire Island study, I came to the conclusion that the big thing was the millions and millions and millions of birds that were here (11). They had two migrations a year, and then they had the eggs. Bird eggs were a big deal in the diet of the [Indians]. They were not mountain-type Indians, the Klamath and the Modocs. The marshes were the places. Except, they would go to Huckleberry Mountain, which was near Crater Lake. It was a big thing for them. Here’s this sweet stuff. You take a people that don’t have sugar and those huckleberries were very attractive. Charlie Ogle said they’d go out and leave their hayfields to pick huckleberries in the huckleberry season. They’d also go up there to get kinnikinniuk [to] smoke (12). It grows there. I talked to an Indian and he said that’s where he’d get kinnikinniuk.

On Huckleberry Mountain?

No, in the Crater Lake National Park area.

In the park.

Beyond those two things, I don’t think they spent much time in the mountains, either at Crater Lake or the Sky Lakes.

There’s quite a lot of archeological evidence under the pumice around Crescent Lake. In the Nightfire Island study, I revealed the date of the major eruption of Mount Mazama. [The discoveries] around Crescent Lake… Cressman first told me about it and wrote about it. Somebody uncovered it in a road cut and he went out there. He gave me a paper that he’d published on it. But low water washes out Indian artifacts from under that seven thousand-year-old pumice, or rocks nearly 7,000 years old.

 They would have been from people on the west side of the mountains?

I don’t know. Time may prove that there were very ancient people on the west side of the Cascades. I know of two or three evidences of Clovis-type projectile points being found over there. You have to have erosion to uncover that stuff, and if people find something like that and they are not afraid to let you know about it.

We found a small seasonal camp in the upper reaches of National Creek in the park, and it seemed like it indicated people from the west side were moving in and out of the area.

That’s more likely, too, because I think you find black-tailed deer in the park, don’t you?

Yes.

And I don’t suppose it’s the greatest mule deer habitat on earth up there. They are more of desert deer.

Yes, you see them; at least I’ve seen them, late in the year, and kind of close to the rim. But it isn’t the ideal habitat for them.

Seldon Kirk told me that they would go over into Jackson County to hunt deer. These guys here, they catch these deer in the winter time, you know. There weren’t many deer here at the time of the coming of the Europeans. The deer were pretty darn scarce. If Peter Skene Ogden and his men had not bought dogs from the Indians, why, they might have starved to death.

 Foot notes:

  1. Chief Ranger at Crater Lake National Park from 1909 to 1920.
  2. This occurred in 1957.
  3. Prehistory of the Far West, published in 1977.
  4. Ernest Borgman was the superintendent of the Klamath Falls Group Office from 1973 to 1980. He resides in Klamath Falls.
  5. Superintendent of Crater Lake National Park from 1978 to 1983.
  6. Doris Payne wrote “My Friends, the Hemlocks of Crater Lake’,American Forests50:8 (August 1944), pp. 377-379, 415; and “Human Values in Nature as represented at Crater Lake,” The Living Wilderness 8:12 (October 1945), 15-20.
  7. On the Oregon Institute of Technology campus in Klamath Falls.
  8. Chief of Interpretation at Lava Beds National Monument.
  9. Doris Omundson Bowen was superintendent at Lava Beds National Monument from 1986 to 1993.
  10. The monument was administered by the Forest Service from 1925 to 1934.
  11. Nightfire Island is an important archaeological site in Lower Klamath Lake.
  12. Arctostaphylos ura-ursi, which is manzanita that is sometimes called bearberry.
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