Oregonian June 12, 1935 PEOPLE OF THE LAKE In a recent report of the death of Mary Lalakes, aged woman of the tribe of American Indians known as the Klamaths, it was said: "Her entire life was spent on the reservation." That of course is not strictly true. She was reputed to be 107 years old at the time she died, which would place the date of her birth at or near 1828. She was born in the vicinity of Klamath Lake, of parents who were indigenes of the region. Few whites had ever visited the lake before that time; Peter Ogden Skeen mentions it in his journal of the year 1826, and gave the name as "Clammitte." Regardless of the exact age of Mrs. Lalakes, which may have been a little more or a little less than 107 years----recordation of the passage of time was a relatively unimportant matter to the Indians----it is apparent she grew to mature womanhood before the reservation was established. In 1864 the Klamaths and the Modocs known as untamed tribes, and members of the Lutuamian family, ceded their lands to the government and went to the Klamath Reservation. The Modocs went to war to recapture their ancestral homes in the early 70s, under Captain Jack, but were defeated and dispersed in battles in the lava beds; Captain Jack and five other leaders were hanged at Fort Klamath. The tribe was then distributed among three distant reservations and no longer exists as an entity. The Klamaths, however, adjusted themselves to the inevitable. Mrs. Lalakes was an example of that conformation; she and her husband accepted Christianity and were active in establishing Methodist missions in the territory. It is to be regretted that a record of the impressions of this woman are not extant, the survey she made of the passing of her people from their free savage state, enjoyed for hundreds of years with little perceptible change, to their present condition of comparative civilization----all within the space of one woman's lifetime. _________________________________________________________________ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar – get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/