The Ozette Prairies of Olympic National Park - Natural Resources ...

She arrived early enough on the Makah Reservation to find an individual that still had memory of burning
on the Ozette Prairies. She interviewed Alice Kalappa (Makah) in the early 1940s about Ozette Settlements
and Ms. Kalappa said: “They used to burn the berry grounds, after they had picked the berries.
And the cranberry marsh, they would burn that to have a good marsh to keep the trees out. Now there
are lots of trees on the marsh because nobody takes care of it anymore” (Colson 1941-1944).
In 1940, reporter Jack Henson interviewed Charles Keller, one of the early non-Indian settlers in
the Ozette area. He reported that:
Explanations of small and large prairies in the peninsula area was given by Keller,
who claims the clearings were made by Indian fires.The Indians burned off the timber
so they could more readily kill the elk and deer by hiding in the timber along the edges
of the clearing and shooting the animals with their short range bows and arrows. Each
year for years the underbrush was burned over so that eventually there was a natural
open meadow on which grass grew. There was no heavy underbrush or trees left in the
tracts and the game congregated there to feed.
Keller had a long history in the Ozette area. In 1913 he moved out to West Clallam and until 1918
Keller logged, trapped, farmed and store clerked in the west end. He married Ida Nylund (whose fam-
ily homesteaded the Ozette Lake area in 1889-1890) in 1919 and the young couple went over the trail to
Ozette Lake in the fall of 1919 and lived on Umbrella Bay. In 1927 the Kellers built a tourist resort at Lake
Ozette and operated it until 1945 (Henson n.d.).
Keller spent time interviewing Makah at the Makah Reservation about historical events and his
consultants included Elliot Anderson. Elliot Anderson was the last Ozette Indian to live on the Ozette
Indian Reservation and was still living there in 1937 (Macy 1937). He took Anderson on one or several
field trips (Keller 1941). Superintendent Preston P. Macy wrote in a memorandom to the Director of the
National Park Service dated May 27, 1941 of Keller’s credentials: “Mr. Kellers [sic] having lived at Ozette
the greater part of his life and Mrs. Kellers [sic] having been born there, and knowing all of the old time
Indians, has made it possible to get information and acquire objects of interest that we otherwise could
acquire only with the expenditure of funds. As has been stated in previous correspondence, the only Indian
living, with rights on the Ozette Reservation, is well along in years and perhaps will last a comparatively
short time. He and the other old timers of neighboring tribes have a store of knowledge which Mr.
Keller is in position to acquire since he speaks their language and they have the confidence in him that is
required for acquiring information.”
Myra Vanderhoof is Charles Keller’s daughter. In an article published in 1960 she substantiated
her father’s claims of Indian burning of Ahlstrom’s Prairie. Myra Vanderhoof, as a descendant of Ozette
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