Le procès du Creuseur de tombes

Let us abandon Cristóforos Columbus' mistake and not use the word “Indian” for Americans who were the peoples of the two continents, North and South, when he stumbled upon them, but replace it with Aboriginal Americans. This was suggested to me by the granddaughter of a signer of the broken “treaty” between the US and the Klamath, Modoc and Yahooskin peoples, Seldon Kirk. Her name is Barbara Kirk. After several years I came to agree that it is the best way to refer to the global surviving original peoples of all Continents and Islands who are yet with us after the Empire's expansion.

Photo: A U.S. Bureau of Land Management archaeologist, translated as “grave digger” in Klamath speech, lectures to the aboriginals in his Klamath Falls conference room; telling them of how he is taking care of their “cultural resources” and explaining to them about their culture. He was hied for this job by getting “veteran's preference”, being retired from a military career.

The man facing me is “Old Face” Reuben Sanders; the one facing the Grave Digger is Worden “Woody” Egsman who was the survivor of the last great gunfight in Chiloquin; having held off several cars of BIA and State Police until he took a bullet to his gut. He spent many years in prison before returning to be one of the last living culatural experts and speaker of the Klamath language.

Now I'm GonnaTell You Sonething

Chuck Kimbol was also a prinsoner for many years in Federal Prison. He had killed a White man with his bare hands in the street outside a bar in Klamath Falls, Oregon, for making insulting remarks about his peoples. He killed that man with his bare fists. He went to prison and studied Indian Law. When he go out, he filed cases … Kimball v Callahan I and II … which restored the Klamath, Modoc and Yahooskin Tribes to Federally recognized status and restrored their hunting, gathering and fishing rights on their former “Reservation” lands. He hired me as the Tribes' first anthropoligist. In my first meeting with Chuck Kimbol (his own spelling of his name), in his Tribal Chairman's office, surrounded by leather bound law books, , I recall him holding up his finger before my face and saying, “Now, I'm going to tell you something!”

The Trial

The Klamath County Court Room wss full when a retinue of Aboriginal men in buckskins, cowboy boots, braids … some with eagle feathers, filed in silently and stood, arms crossed on chest, stone silent.

The judge banged his gavel and announced the case and described the charges: he had been caught digging into graves in the Klamath Tribe cemetary and stealing the grave items to sell them; both traditonal artifacts and such things as watches and gold teeth.

He listened to the witnesses and to the accused.

The accused had asked for the Examining Majistrate to make a dicisoin rather than a jury.

In the end, the Examining Majistrate declared the accused to be guilty as charged. He was sentenced to many years in prison.

Silence!

Than the audience got up and left the courtrooom.

Then the Aboriiginal warriors filed out silently.

I sat there. Silently amazed.

John Allis

2020-01-09T13:48:35.63