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…
Tag: General History
Dave Yachkawa becomes Tualatin Chief 1864
Information about the inner lives of the tribes in the 1860s is very sparse. A few federal reports exist but not a whole lot of information about the…
Native Details of the Battle of Hungry Hill
As noted by Dr. Mark Tveskov in his 2017 article “A “Most Disastrous” Affair: The Battle of Hungry Hill, Historical Memory, and the Rogue River War” (OHQ Vol.…
Development of Tribal Cultural Identity at the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation
A good number of people have over the years shown some confusion about the identity of the tribal members at the Grand Ronde tribe. Many natives and non-natives…
Cast to the Edge: the Falls View Rancheria in Oregon City
Oregon City, the settlement town, was established by Hudsons Bay company in 1829, but there was already a Clowewalla village in this location for more than 10,000 years.…
Kwalhioqua-Clatskanie-Upper Umpqua
There are two areas of Oregon with athapaskan speaking tribes. Southwest Oregon has a large number of athapaskan speaking tribes that extend as far north as the Upper…
Frog is in the Moon: Takelma Stories
Stories from the Takelma people are great information about how people thought about their world. This is important to me because I have direct ancestry with Takelma and…
Place-naming in the Takelma Homelands
This essay came about due to the present project to rename Dead Indian Memorial Road to something less overtly racist in the eyes of native peoples. There have…
Cattle-Headed People and Round-heads
I am not a linguist, but have a lot of experience researching and using native languages especially Chinuk Wawa, Kalapuyan, and Athapaskan languages. In recent research, I found…
Myths of the Wandering Indians
From at least the 18th century and afterward, for much of the writing about Native peoples, we are written about as being wandering peoples. Explorers, settlers, fur traders…
Rogue River Peoples, Oregon
On a bright summer day I was visiting the Rogue River Valley and stopped at upper Table Rock. I knew about the trail to the top and park…
What can we do to help Native peoples?
I have made a career researching the native peoples of western Oregon. For the past 20 years, I have spent thousands of hours each year researching the tribes.…
Revisiting the Schools I Attended
As a native person, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and a descendant of the Santiam, Takelma, and Chinook peoples of western Oregon, I have…
The Willamette Mission Development
Thanks to Jim Sheppke, former State Librarian for the state of Oregon, I received a digital copy of the thesis“Mill Place” on the Willamette a new Mission house…
How the Trade and Intercourse Acts Aided Colonization of Native Lands
Foreword As an instructor in Native Studies and anthropology, I get bombarded with having to explain why native peoples on the reservations live the way they live. People…
An Early Account of Native People Near Falls City
Each archive I enter I find new information about the native peoples of that county. Generally, the stories are of early encounters with a few native people, experiences…
Agent of Rebirth, Kalapuyan Culture in Linn County
The Kalapuyans, for their part, accepted the settlement of the whites at first, as they saw the great wealth in new things brought to them, metals, fabrics, weapons,…
Commissioner Brunot Lectures Tribal Chiefs on Moral Living, 1871
In 1871, the BIA had just gotten some direction from President Ulysses S, Grant to go ahead and train the Indians to be civilized so that they may…
Slavery at Canyonville, 1853
The subject of slavery in Oregon goes back to the first wave of settlers who came to the territory in 1844 and after. These first settlers combined with…
Coles Valley settlers want the Resources on the Umpqua Reservation, 1854
The following two letters are an example of how the settlers could not live with the tribal people having any resources. The settlers in 1854 had won, and…
The Umpqua River Indians Prepare for Removal
William Martin, the Sub-Indian Agent of the Umpqua and Coos Bay was appointed to the position by Jole Palmer in June 1853. He worked to understand the tribes…
Preparing for Purchase, First Indian Agent in Coos Bay, 1853
When Joel Palmer was appointed to Superintendent of Indian Affairs in May 1853 he had a good working knowledge of the tribes but had never visited the southern…
Causes of the 1853 Rogue River War
The first Rogue River War was a series of skirmishes and battles between mainly gold miners and the tribes. The miners had no regard for the tribes and…
Baleful Gifts of Civilization: Smallpox Epidemic 1853
It is well recording in numerous sources that diseases from Europe came with the exploring Whitemen and infected millions of the indigenous peoples of the World with…