KLAMATH
Klamath is the name of a village in Humboldt County, but is particularly known as applied to the Klamath River, which flows in a deep and narrow canyon through the counties of Siskiyou and Humboldt.
The word, in its different forms of Klamath, Tlametl, and Clamet, is the name by which these Indians were known to the Chinooks, and through them to the whites, their proper designation in their own language being Lutuami.—(Bancroft’s Native Races, Vol. 1, page 444.)
The meaning of the word has not been positively ascertained, although it is thought by ethnologists to be a possible corruption of Maklaks (people, community,—literally, the encamped). The Klamaths were a hardy people, who had many slaves captured from other tribes. The slave trade seems to have been carried on quite extensively among the California Indians.