Camas Journal 2023: Baby Camas, Mowing, Cultural Fire
This year I tried to get out there into the field when the camas is beginning to erupt from the ground. I am not sure I have seen…
This year I tried to get out there into the field when the camas is beginning to erupt from the ground. I am not sure I have seen…
In recent work I have begun to document the various wetlands of the Willamette Valley from before settler changes took effect. Our best, and most
In 1853 Joel Palmer, newly appointed Indian Superintendent of Oregon, was working to keep the peace between the tribes and settlers in Oregon. The plan was to remove…
As noted in several essays on this blog, removing tribes from their lands and to the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation was not a perfect process. Most of the…
In recent months I have been delving into records of the California Superintendency. I have studied several California tribes in the past, namely the Tolowa and Shasta tribes,…
I have always been confused why there is a Chemawa Jr. High in Riverside CA. in recent reserahc I foudn there was a preexisting Chemawa park which predated…
The North coast of Oregon had several tribes of Native peoples, the Tillamook tribes and bands (Tillamook, Nehalem (Naalem), Nestucca, Nechesne) and the Clatsop tribe of Chinooks.…
A subject which has had little clarity in the past is when were the Umpqua and Southern Kalapuya, the Yoncallas, resettled to the Umpqua Reservation at Coles Valley.…
It seems important to tribes that if they are truly to become restored, and decolonized, they need to be culturally restored by helping to decolonize their lands and…
I returned today to Bush Park to take in the middle prairie and see how things are going. The weather has scattered spring rains all day. This year…
I recently heard about another park I had not been to in Salem, Joryville Park. I went assuming it would be mostly grassland but was surprised that this…
Today, I found time to visit a third field in Salem with lots of camas. Minto-Brown Island Park has several fields at least two of them have camas,…
In 1856, Joel Palmer had some 4000 Natives removed from their homelands to the Coast and Grand Ronde Indian Reservations. Up to at least April of 1856 the…
The Charles Wilkes Exploring expedition came to Oregon in August 1841. The expedition split into two parts with some of the expedition venturing up the Columbia, and a…
The Chetco Indians, perhaps more than nearly any other tribe on the Oregon coast, were repeatedly attacked by racist white settlers before their removal. In a previous set…
The experiences of the Grave Creek Indians of southwestern Oregon mirror those of the other tribes in the region. They however hardly survived the 1850s as most of…
In Oregon, we have the well-known Wapato Lake, near Gaston. The lake originally was the center of seasonal activities of the Tualatin Kalapuyans (Atfalati) who lived near and…
In 1981 I took a job weeding onion fields out Hazelgreen Road on the outskirts of Salem, Oregon, as one of my first jobs. In the summer after…
There are numerous oral histories from tribal people in Oregon about catastrophic events, fires, volcanic eruptions, floods, tsunamis. Many of these stories are fantastically imagined and are likely…
Information about the Southern Kalapuyans, those south of Brownsville have been scarce to come by. The Kalapuyans in the north were settled earlier and seemed to have more…
The Santiam Forks Band of Molalla is not as well known as the Northern Molalla. We have had a few stories and while there is some information in…
The area of the south bank of the Columbia between the Sandy and Willamette Rivers is of particular interest to the tribes who once lived there. Historically, there…
Joel Palmer’s letters during his superintendency lend themselves to a timeline for the removal of most tribes. Palmer penned orders and received reports from his Indian agents, sub…
In Record Group 75 (Bureau of Indian Affairs) microfilm are many millions of records of the tribes as they were being managed by federal Indian agents. The M234…