Jessica Mullin had a strange feeling when she first visited a stretch of the Klamath Basin, near Tule Lake on the California-Oregon border. The distant snow-capped mountains, marshlands and wide-open desert looked nothing like her home in Oklahoma. Yet she was overwhelmed with nostalgia.
“The feeling is that you are in a familiar place,” Mullin said. “It's so bizarre — never felt that anywhere else.”
Mullin is a member of the Modoc Nation of Oklahoma. Her ancestors once called this area home.
After more than a century away, they’re beginning to return. The Modoc Nation has bought more than 3,000 acres in Siskiyou and Modoc counties through its Homelands Program. On that land, they have begun restoration efforts — removing invasive species and stray cattle — and plan to bring back native food sources and reintroduce bighorn sheep.
At the heart of the tribe’s efforts is a cultural program that encourages members to have experiences like the one Mullin had.
“It’s easy to see why our people fought for that land and wanted to stay there,” she said.
Modoc War
In the 1860s, amid rising conflict between tribes and white settlers, the U.S. government forced the Modoc of Northern California onto a reservation in Oregon, shared with the Klamath people.
Tensions grew as the two tribes competed for food and resources on the reservation. A small band, led by Captain Jack, also known as Kintpuash, resisted the relocation and returned to the Modoc’s home along the Lost River. Federal soldiers’ response sparked the Modoc War.
Captain Jack and his band of no more than 60 fighters, plus women and children, took refuge in the caves and tunnels of what’s now Lava Beds National Monument. They waged an effective guerrilla war, holding out for more than six months against some 1,000 federal troops and militia volunteers. The Army even wheeled out howitzers to shell Captain Jack’s camp. The conflict was one of the costliest engagements of the Indian Wars.
Captain Jack’s band eventually splintered, then surrendered. More than 50 died in the fighting, mostly from the government’s side. Around 150 Modoc survivors were sent in cattle cars to Indian Territory, in what is now Oklahoma.
Captain Jack and three others were executed at Fort Klamath for the killing of an unarmed Gen. Edward Canby during peace negotiations. He was the only general lost in the Indian Wars.
The descendants of the Modoc who stayed in California and Oregon are now mostly members of the Klamath Tribes. In the early 1900s, the federal government allowed the Modoc in Oklahoma to return to the Klamath Reservation in Oregon. According to the Modoc Nation, just 29 took the offer.
Mullin learned this history and her connection to it as an adult. She said members in Oklahoma want to reconnect with their past and traditions.
“There was such a desire for members to have that involvement on another level that wasn't just like business and political and member benefits,” she said. “We haven't had elders to kind of pass those things down and show us the way.”
Restoration
The past never seems far from Homelands Director Ken Sandusky’s mind. On a summer day, he stood on the Modoc Nation’s land in Siskiyou County, near the dry bed of the Lower Klamath Lake.
“We're on the Applegate Trail that came over Sheepy Ridge right behind us,” he said.
Frontier emigrants traveled west on this trail. Sandusky was thinking further back, to a time before infrastructure and agriculture dried up miles of wetlands. He said wocus, a water lily that was a major food source for the Modoc, once covered the shallow waters here.
“This would have been a giant wocus farm,” he said.
Brian Herbert, homelands manager for the tribe, is a Modoc descendant and an enrolled member of the Klamath Tribes.
“It's kind of heartbreaking to see this landscape as it sits,” he said.
Herbert said they would like, if possible, to bring back wetlands here.
“Adding water to the landscape, it revives the landscape, it brings everything back,” Herbert said. “It's just part of that reconnection process.”
Tensions
Any change in this resource-rich land can be seen as a threat to someone. For farmers, the reclaimed lake beds are highly productive cropland that supports the local economy and helps feed the country. For conservationists, those areas are critical wildlife habitat that needs to be protected and restored. And for federal agencies, any change affects how they manage water and the infrastructure that delivers it.
Survivors and descendants of a Japanese American internment camp at Tule Lake sued the Modoc Nation after the tribe bought a small airport on the former prison’s land. They tried, unsuccessfully, to stop the tribe from building a fence on the property.
Mullin said locals' response to her tribe expanding its footprint has been mixed. She said some people have welcomed them and are eager to share Modoc traditions.
“On the other hand, we've also had some folks that are like, ‘If your ancestor really wanted you to be here, they would have come back when they could have,’” she said.
An annual Modoc ancestral run takes place through the homelands area. On two occasions, wary property owners have fired weapons at terrified runners.
“There's tension. I'm not going to pretend otherwise,” Klamath Tribes Chairman William Ray Jr. said.
In 1864, the Klamath Tribes signed a treaty with the federal government, granting it rights to water and other resources. Ray is protective of those rights. He sees the Modoc in Oklahoma as outsiders, whose connection to the land has been severed.
“We didn't move away, the families of the Klamath Tribes,” Ray said. “We've been here.”
Ray said he intends to defend the Klamath Tribes’ treaty rights.
“We are not trying to promote a fight, but we're going to protect what's ours,” he said. “The treaty of 1864 belongs to the Klamath Tribes.”
Growing the pie
Robert Burkybile, chief of the Modoc Nation, said he’s focused on bringing members to California not only to reconnect with the land but also to interact with members of the Klamath Tribes.
“We're not there to take a slice of the pie,” he said. “We feel we're trying to add to it, and unfortunately, maybe we haven't done a great job expressing that.”
Despite tensions, his tribe isn’t slowing down its work. The tribe recently received California Natural Resources Agency funding to buy 874 more acres.
