SPRAGUE RIVER -- A summer evening on Jim and Caren Goold's front porch. The river meanders through their cow pasture, a curly blue ribbon framed by foothills dotted with ponderosa pine. And, yes, the cattle are lowing.

It's about as pastoral as a scene gets. But the upper Klamath Basin, already three months into a drought emergency, is far from peaceful this summer.

Two parties with strong ties to the land, the upper basin ranchers and The Klamath Tribes, are pitted against each other for limited water, the latest skirmish in one of the nation's most persistent water wars. And deep historical divisions stand in the way of compromise.

In late June, a state watermaster handed Jim Goold a yellow card ordering him to shut off irrigation for the first time in his 40 years on the 617-acre ranch.

"It's beyond frustrating," Caren Goold says. "We have all this wonderful water going by and we can't touch any of it."

The Goolds worry they'll lose pasture for 300-plus cows, their income and their ranch, where Jim's parents are buried out back. They see a future land grab through the

, with land values falling as irrigation water evaporates.

Here's where history's twists come in. Much of the upper basin, including the Goolds' ranch, was once

' reservation land. The federal government "terminated" the tribes in 1954, a move that included cash payouts, but is widely seen as a tribal disaster.

This year, fortunes sharply changed. The state of Oregon ruled that the tribes' "time immemorial" water rights on the former reservation remain intact, giving the tribes a firm upper hand. Last month,

to sustain their hunting and fishing grounds, triggering the shutoffs.

Twenty miles down Sprague River Road, at the tribes' offices in Chiloquin, Perry Chocktoot talks about his own attachment to the land, too. He grew up hunting and fishing here. His grandmother taught him how to smoke and can fish --110 minutes, 15 pounds of pressure.

Chocktoot, the tribes' cultural and heritage director, says court cases and water rights decisions should have warned the ranchers what was coming. But too many of them view Indians as "drunken idiots," he says. "And, guess what, we're not."

"We're here by the gift of our creator to help the community," he says. "That mindset has never been reciprocal. They had a chance to effectively work with the tribes, but they said not just no, but hell no."

Dry times



Absent a judicial reprieve or a settlement, the water rights decision means irrigation with river water will be shut off to hundreds of ranchers this summer, shriveling pasture for 70,000 to 100,000 cattle.

So far, state watermasters have shut off water to roughly 300 irrigators on the Sprague and Williamson rivers, with more tributaries of Upper Klamath Lake still to be evaluated.

It's an echo of Klamath water fiasco a decade ago.

In 2001, the U.S. government cut off water to irrigators who tap Upper Klamath Lake as part of the

. The shutoff stemmed from

listings of coho salmon and two species of suckers and strict ESA requirements on federal projects.

The next year, with intervention from Dick Cheney, the farmers got water instead, and 30,000 chinook salmon died in the lower Klamath River.

That crisis pushed project farmers to negotiate with the tribes, federal and state governments and others to share water and restore riverside habitat. The 2008

was coupled with a plan to remove four

dams on the Klamath River by 2020, which would be the largest dam removal in U.S. history.

But this year is different. Cattle ranchers above the lake, outside the reclamation project, were free to irrigate despite the ESA listings -- until this year's water rights decision.

Many of the ranchers are still fighting, in court and on the streets. On Monday, they rallied in Klamath Falls, driving cattle trucks down Main Street.

They also have challenged the water rights decisions in Klamath County circuit court, asking for a stay this summer. They say the state gave the tribes more water than they need to support hunting and fishing habitat.

The tribes' water calls would reduce irrigation even in normal water years, the ranchers argue. State officials figure tribal rights fall well below normal streamflows, but the ranchers think the state's flow estimates are too high.

Roger Nicholson, who leads two ranching groups, raises cattle on 3,000 acres near Fort Klamath. Some of that land came from tribal members, he says, but most has been in his family since the 1890s.

The tribes' water calls affect his draw even on streams outside the former reservation, he says, since those flows are needed to meet the water rights the tribes won downstream.

The water rights decisions were "a travesty of justice," Nicholson says, and the shutoffs are "an economic catastrophe beyond compare." Affected ranches cover more than 100,000 acres, ranching groups estimate.

"It's bankrupting a whole community," Nicholson says.

Some ranchers can draw on wells this summer to water pasture, and the state is allowing withdrawals for cattle drinking water. But most will have to sell cattle, buy hay to feed them or try to move them to greener lands.

None of those options look good. Selling cattle early usually brings low prices. Hay prices are already spiking. And the rest of the West is dry, too, particularly California, limiting spots to move the cows.

Ken Willard, a rancher along the Sprague River, normally runs 500 head of cattle on his ranch. He chopped down to 120 in anticipation of the shutoff, and figures he has enough hay to feed them for just another month.

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Willard wants Klamath County commissioners to allow ranchers to sell off in 10-acre lots. Then, he says, he and his wife could build their dream house and retire.

Willard is upset at the tribes. He thought they would support ranchers' water draws as long as they gave them access to the land to fish and hunt. Ranchers have also made conservation upgrades, he says, swapping enclosed pipes for open ditches, restoring streamsides and building fences to bar cattle from streams.

"I just think the tribe is set on wanting everything," he says.

Ties to the land



The tribal timeline starts more than 10,000 years ago, but modern conversations turn to two key years: 1864, when a treaty carved a 2-million-acre reservation out of 22 million acres of the tribes' ancestral homelands; and 1954, when the Termination Act eliminated it.

The act paid 1,659 tribal members $43,000 each for relinquishing their tribal membership, funding the payments with reservation land sales. For others, it put land in a trust, with much of the acreage later sold off to non-natives.

For some ranchers, that's a grievance: The tribes were compensated for the land, but still hold the water rights attached to it.

Tribal members don't see it that way.

"My granddad equated it to scratching a penny with a pocketknife," says Chocktoot. "That scratch you get off the penny, that's what you were given for your life, your culture."

Some 800,000 acres of income-generating Ponderosa pine on the former reservation eventually shifted into the

. Unemployment and alcoholism rose. Tribal members died at an increasingly young age.

By 1976, a report to the American Indian Policy Review Commission noted that few tribal members owned land or were economically independent: "In general the Klamaths lost their land and have nothing to show for that loss," it concluded.

Some tribal members stayed on as ranchers -- and are also being affected by the shutoff this summer. But most didn't, says Jeff Mitchell, lead negotiator for the tribes.

"I know who's sitting on my family ranches," he says. "There's not a family in this tribe that can't look out and see a piece of land that was in their family some time before."

No trespassing signs went up, limiting hunting and fishing access, Mitchell says. Dams on the Klamath River eliminated salmon from the upper basin.

Two species of sucker fish, long a tribal staple, declined sharply. By 1986, tribal members stopped catching them, a stinging blow for a longtime fish people. Congress reinstated the tribes that same year.

Mitchell said the long-term goals are to work with willing sellers to create a "sustainable reservation" and to see salmon return to the upper basin.

Short-term, the tribes want more water-quality upgrades from ranchers. They also want support for the Klamath Basin Restoration Act, held up in Congress by a 15-year, $500 million federal price tag.

Millions would go to habitat restoration, including improvements to bolster fish. Another $21 million would allow the tribes to acquire a 90,000-acre timber tract on former reservation land.

"We're going to strike a deal that favors them and us," Chocktoot says. "We've never drawn a line in the sand."

Negotiations underway



Negotiations are underway, with strong prodding from U.S. Sen.

, D-Oregon, who says the restoration agreement needs to include more cattle ranchers and less local opposition to have a political prayer in Congress.

Nicholson and like-minded ranching leaders say they're open to a deal. But they've long been skeptical of the 2008 restoration agreement.

In an opinion piece for the Klamath Falls

in 2009, Nicholson and another rancher said the restoration agreement, which called for water use reductions but didn't guarantee water for ranchers, amounted to "cultural genocide."

Removing hydroelectric dams in favor of fish has also proved controversial with conservative Klamath County commissioners and U.S. House Republicans. If Congress doesn't authorize dam removal, the restoration agreement goes away.

Rancher Bob Sanders signed on with a smaller group, the Upper Klamath Water Users Association. It has worked with the tribes and supported the restoration agreement, which included provisions to negotiate water sharing with tribes. The ranchers could have had that negotiation sealed by now if more had signed on, he says.

"I've made enemies," Sanders says, "because I do believe the tribes met with us in good faith and worked harder to make it better." Going forward, he says, "it could get nasty, because so many people are convinced the tribes should get nothing."

Outside water lawyers say the court is unlikely to overturn the tribes' water rights. But the ranchers fighting in court think they have a good shot at winning a water rights stay this summer and eventually knocking down the amount of water the tribes get.

Jim and Caren Goold just want a resolution, soon. Jim Goold's grandmother taught him how to ranch, starting with sheering sheep when he was a high school sophomore. He's 78 now.

"For me to have to be someplace where I don't have horses and cattle and my working dogs," he says, "you'd just as well shoot me."

-- Scott Learn