For millennia, the relationship between the fish and the people was a cycle of abundance. When the snow began to melt and the Sprague River turned turbid with spring runoff, the fish would return by the millions, turning the water into a writhing silver blanket. This return signaled the end of the "starving time" of winter. But in the modern age, the balance has shifted, and the water levels that once protected the suckers now dictate their survival. The c’waam and koptu are unique because they are "long-lived" survivors, often reaching 30 or 40 years of age, yet they have faced a devastating biological bottleneck since the 1990s.
The procreation of these sacred fish is tied intimately to the height of the lake’s surface. When water levels are too low in the spring, the shallow shoreline springs where the c’waam prefer to spawn become inaccessible or dry up entirely. Even when the adults manage to spawn in the rivers, the survival of their offspring depends on the presence of healthy, flooded wetlands. The larvae of the c’waam and koptu need the cover of emergent vegetation—the thick stands of tule reeds—to hide from predators and find the microscopic food they need to grow. As the water recedes due to drought and the demands of irrigation, these nursery grounds vanish, leaving the juvenile fish exposed to predators and the toxic effects of summer algae blooms. Today, the basin holds a population of "elderly" fish that continue to spawn every year, but their children rarely survive to adulthood. The struggle for the water in the Klamath Basin is, for the tribes, a struggle to uphold the creator’s ancient promise and ensure that the pieces of the serpent—the life-giving c’waam and koptu—do not vanish forever.
The Serpent’s Flesh
In the ancient days of the Klamath Basin, before the seasons were numbered and the world was fully formed, a darkness moved through the waters of the great lake. A spirit in the form of a giant, ancient serpent prowled the depths and the marshy edges, preying upon the first people of the Klamath. One by one, the villagers vanished into the reeds, leaving the tribes in a state of constant terror and hunger. Desperate and mourning, the people turned their cries toward the sky, begging the creator, Gmok’amp’c, to deliver them from the monster that haunted their shores.
Gmok’amp’c heard their prayers and descended to the basin to confront the beast. In a battle that shook the mountains and churned the mud of the lake bed, the creator seized the giant serpent and dragged it to the top of a nearby peak. With a swift and powerful strike, Gmok’amp’c chopped the serpent into thousands of small pieces and cast them back into the water. As the fragments hit the surface, they did not sink as dead flesh; instead, they shimmered with new life, transforming into the fish that would forever after sustain the people. The larger pieces became the c’waam, the Lost River suckers with their rounded, upturned noses, and the smaller pieces became the koptu, the shortnose suckers. The creator then gave a solemn promise: as long as the c’waam and koptu remained in the water, the Klamath people would never disappear.
