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.
MODOC COUNTY
Modoc, the county in the northeastern corner of the state, is notable as having been the home of the only California tribe that ever caused serious trouble to the United States Government. The Modoc wars are a matter of history.
The Modocs were a fierce tribe of Indians who lived at the head-waters of Pit River, and the name is thought by some persons to mean “head of the river,” or “people, community,” but ethnologists are of the opinion that it means “south people,” probably used by tribes living north of the Modocs. Bancroft, quoting from Steele, in Indian Affairs Report of 1864, page 121, says: “The word Modoc is a Shasta Indian word, and means all distant, stranger, or hostile Indians, and became applied to this tribe by white men in early days from hearing the Shastas refer to them by this term.” It does not appear that Bancroft had any genuine scientific authority for this statement.
Powers, in his Tribes of California, states that some persons derive this name from Mo-dok-us, the name of a former chief of the tribe under whose leadership they seceded from the Klamath Lake Indians and became an independent tribe. As it was common for seceding bands to assume the name of their leader, Powers is inclined to accept this explanation of the name.
SHASTA
To account for the name Shasta, a number of theories have been advanced, no one of which seems to be positively established. According to the Bureau of Ethnology, “Shasta may be a corruption of Sus-tí-ka, apparently the name of a well-known Indian living about 1840 near the site of Yreka. The name was applied to a group of small tribes in Northern California, extending into Oregon, who were soon extinguished by the development of mining operations.”