Political Cartoonist at Chemawa Indian School, William John Harris
William John Harris was born in Juneau Alaska March 29, 1884 to Richard Tighe Harris an Irishman, and Kitty a member of the Tlingit tribe. Richard Tighe Harris…
Tag: General History
Gradual decline or Catastrophic loss
A fellow scholar asked a question about if the decline of the tribes of Oregon could be termed as “gradual,” here is my response. The destruction of the…
Removal of Four Tribes from the Umpqua Reservation 1855-1856
Between the time of the formation of the Umpqua Reservation in the Umpqua basin (1854) and the removal of the four tribes to Grand Ronde Reservation, in late…
Missing Pages: Additional Signatory Tribes to the Willamette Valley Treaty
For more than 166 years the following pages were missing from the history and legal record of the Grand Ronde Tribe. It appears that sometime in early March…
War of Extermination & Help Planning the Reservation
Sometimes I find remarkable letters that sum up all I have been thinking about what was happening in the 1850s between the tribes and the settlers in Oregon.…
Cascades Winter Villages in the Wapato Valley
Documentation in the Lewis and Clark journals, especially for that of 1806, is of the Cascades tribe seasonal round, the seasonal lifeways of the tribes of the lower…
Native People Live in the Post Apocalypse
I have felt this for years now, that we native people are living in the post-apocalypse. Ever since a student spoke up near the end of the term…
Starving the Deschutes tribe into submission, 1856
Every day of research I stumble upon another act of federal officials to destroy the tribes. Here is a letter documenting the intentions of an Indian Agent to…
Willamette Valley Treaty is sent to Washington, D.C. Jan. 22, 1855
Willamette Valley Treaty Origins of the Willamette Valley treaty
Influenza on the Reservation
The tribes removed to the Grand Ronde Reservation in 1856 never realized the safety and security of a reservation they were promised in seven treaties. They were forced…
Genealogy of Racism on American Indians
Notes transcribed from Smedley, Audrey. Race in North America, Origin and Evolution of a Worldview, 2nd edition, Westview press, 1999, Comments are my own. The origins of racism…
Post Indianism
Gerald Vizenor has created the idea of the Post Indian, native peoples who are living a new consciousness beyond the stereotypes of victim-hood about Indians. Post-Indians defy the…
Gendered terms in Kalapuyan
This essay began some years ago when I was working on the Kalapuya lessons project with Esther Stutzman and her family. We discussed in our group the lack…
Snowats, Iswukaw and Quartux
The story of Snowats, Iswukaw and Quartux, written down and published by Jesse Applegate in 1907, appears to be a version of one of the four myth ages…
Wapato Canoes
There are several types of canoes for the region which served the purposes of the tribes. The most well know is the Chinook canoe or western style canoe…
My Mankiller Story
Now that I am immersed in native studies, I am finding that everyone has a good Mankiller story, as in a story of working with Wilma Mankiller the…
1851 Treaty with the Tualatin Band of Kalapuyas
The Tualatin treaty was the first to be negotiated in April of 1851 by the Willamette Valley Treaty Commission. The commission was replaced by Anson Dart who took…
Palmer’s Knowledge of the Tribes, 1854
Joel Palmer got his appointment to be the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in 1853 after the failure of Anson Dart to get some 19 treaties ratified. Palmer already…
Curry’s Volunteers
This letter from General Wool is remarkable for its transparency in revealing the actions and decisions of Governor Curry of Oregon. General George Law Curry was a two-time…
Planning the Reserve on the Sea Coast
The following letters detail one side of the conversation with Joel Palmer, Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Oregon, and John Wool, commander of the Pacific Department. (I don’t…
Rector Responds to the Catholic Boarding School Proposal, 1862
In 1862 the Catholic Church of the United States made a proposal to open boarding schools to serve all of the Indian reservations primarily served by their own…
Rogue River People
Rouge is a common enough mis-spelling of the word Rogue. Rouge is a French word that means red, while Rogue is another French word meaning brigand, outlaw, criminal…
General Wool in California
The following is a series of statements by General John E. Wool and his underlings in the 1850s, from their administrative moorings in Benecia, California, the offices of…
Red Caps Murder Patora
In March 1855, Patora a chief of the Yurok tribe was murdered by volunteers on the Klamath River in California. The Yurok at this time were peaceful and…