THE SAGE PLAINS OF OREGON 
401 
selves more capable of development under those conditions than 
the Klamath Indians of Oregon. They are now gathered to- 
gether upon a reservation, about 40 miles by 60 in extent, in the 
southwestern part of the Oregon plains, in a country partly for- 
ested and partly covered with sage brush. The land they occupy 
is a part of that upon which their ancestors lived, and thus, not 
having been removed from the conditions under which they 
developed, they furnish an excellent opportunity for observing 
an intelligent Indian tribe, in process of civilization, still retain- 
ing the best and most deeply rooted of their old customs and 
habits and substituting for the less useful ones the improve- 
ments of civilization, yet not giving up in a generation the old 
tendencies of centuries. These Indians graze cattle and horses» 
cut hay for winter use, and raise a small quantity of grain and 
occasionally a few vegetables. They build fences around their 
separate farms and are now building houses of sawed lumber, 
their blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, and other artisans 
being educated at the agency schools. 
At least a hundred species of the native plants of the region 
are still used by the Klamaths in one way or another. One of 
their staple farinaceous foods is the seed of the great yellow 
water-lily of the northwest, Nymphaea polysepala, which grows in 
inexhaustible quantities in the marshes of the reservation. The 
bulbs of the camas plant, of which enormous amounts are pried 
out of the ground in spring with a camas stick or digger, furnish 
another excellent and favorite food. The most important of their 
fleshy fruits is a huckleberry, Vaccinium myrtilloides, which covers 
the mountain slopes in some parts of the neighboring Cascades. 
The best of their fibers is a perennial blue-liowered flax, Linum 
lewisii, which grows without irrigation in the open sage brush at 
higher altitudes. They get a beautiful lemon-yellow permanent 
dye from a 3 ^ellow lichen, Evernia vidpinn, which grows al)un- 
dantly on the trunks of trees in the i)ine forests. Some of these 
plants and others equally useful may well attract the attention 
of agricultural exi)erimenters. 
In view of the present agricultural de})ression, which a])j)ears 
to be especially severe in the })lains of eastern Oregon, the (ques- 
tion naturally arises what the future promises in the wa}'^ of re- 
lief; whether the agricultural capacities of the region are such as 
to offer a fair ])ros])ect of relief b}’^ some modification of the 
prevailing system or whether the result must be the gradual 
abandonment of present settlements. 1’his is notabl}^ one of 
