Neglect along the Klamath, 1926
Spott was honored by the French government for bravery during World War I. Afterward he apprenticed with the California anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber; eventually they collaborated on publications of Yurok oral tradition. Kroeber himself was one of the Committee of One Hundred, which in 1923, documented the same sort of neglect covered by Spott in his talk.
I did make up my mind in the war that I am American and I went overseas to fight for the country. Then the officers came to me while I was overseas and they told me, “You are all right. You fought for your country.” I just gave them a smile and I thought to myself, “Where is my country when I get home?”
There are many Indian women that are almost blind, and they only have one meal a day, because there is no one to look after them. Most of these people used to live on fish, which they cannot get, and on acorns, and they are starving. They hardly have any clothing to cover them. Many children up along the Klamath River have passed away with disease. Most of them from tuberculosis. There is no road into there where the Indians are. The only road they have got is the Klamath River.
To reach doctors they have to take their children down the Klamath River, to the mouth of the Klamath. It is 24 miles to Crescent City, where we have to go for doctors. It costs us $25.00. Where are the poor Indians to get thes money from to get a doctor for their children? They go from place to place to borrow the money. If they cannot get it, the poor child dies without aid. Inside of four or five years more there will be hardly and Indians left upon the Klamath River.
I came here to notify you that something has to be done. We must have a doctor, and we must have a school to educate our children, we must have a road upon the Klamath River besides the bank of the rivier. Every creek in the winter time goes into the river, and when the river is high you only have a little path, and you cannot go behind the white man’s homestead. We have to go some place else. Whenever the river is low we go back to plan a little, and we get maybe a bucket full of beans, but you know very well we cannot live on that little land that we have got.
My father was an Indian chief, and we used to own everything there. When the land was allotted they allotted him only ten acres, a little farm of land which is mostly gravel and rock, with little scrubby trees and redwood. My father was not satisfied with the land and he said, “We owned this land. We ought to pick out what we want.” “Well,” the surveyor said, “You cannot do it, because it is already taken up by homesteaders. I will tell you what I will do. I will have furnished to you a plow, also a cow and horse and everything so that you can improve you land.” Then, of course, my father said, “All right. I am satisfied with that.” Well, we are still waiting my father passed away when he was ninety years old. I am his son, and I am still waiting for it right now. I f I ever will get the cows or the horses or the plow, I don’t know.
So I am here to tell you how we are standing up along the Klamath River. Often we see a car go past. It is the Indian Service. Do you suppose the man driving that car would stop? Always he has no time for the Indians, and the car with someone from the U.S.A. Indian Service goes past just like a tourist. When he does come to his office, maybe he wants even and Indian woman to give up her allotment to put up a better house for the Government—a Government house, we call it—to help us. “You will have a man to help the Indians out.” The poor Indian woman says, “All right. I will let you have it.” That man only stops there four days and he leaves. Whenever he comes there, just the minute he sees an Indian coming in he meets him by the door and he says, “I got business to do. I have not got any time for you. . . . “
Questions to Think About and Discuss
- How did Robert Spott feel about his identity? Was he Yurok or American or both?
- How did white expansion and homesteading change Yurok life? How did Yurok people cope with these changes?
- What was Spott’s opinion of the U.S. government based on his interactions with interactions with the Indian Service?
- What was Robert Spott’s motive for giving this speech?
