Ewksikni

The Ewksikni are the lake-dwelling Klamath proper: ʔewksiknii is both the Klamath name for themselves and the title of their leading band, whose villages ringed Upper Klamath Lake and the Williamson and other rivers of southern Oregon. They spoke Klamath-Modoc, a language of the proposed Plateau Penutian family, and lived mainly by fishing, supplemented by roots and seeds gathered across the marshes.

Their tradition remembered the eruption of Mount Mazama, which left Crater Lake in their territory, and after horses reached the plateau they raided neighbours to the south such as the Achomawi for slaves while trading dried fish at The Dalles on the Columbia.

Peter Skene Ogden of the Hudson's Bay Company met them in 1826 and was trading regularly by 1829, the first sustained contact with outsiders.