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…
Tag: General History
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…
Major Benjamin Alvord discusses Eastern Oregon Settlement, 1853
In 1853, the former Superintendent of Indian Affairs of Oregon Anson Dart had been forced to resign as none of his nineteen treaties with the tribes were ratified.…
John Collier and Indian Termination Policy
As Commissioner of Indian Affairs, John Collier was a long-term advocate for Indian tribes. In the 1920s, John Collier, a trained sociologist, led efforts in Washington, D.C. to…
Elijah White Romanticizes Oregon Tribal Peoples
Dr. Elijah White was a missionary and the first Indian sub-Agent of the Oregon territory. He was then (1837) part of Jason Lee’s Methodist Mission but had a…
Horatio Hale’s Description of Oregon Tribes
Horatio Hale has been the subject of much attention by me in recent months, in particular his Ethnology and Philology volume 6, United States Exploring Expedition, 1846. His…
Ancient History of the Molala (La’tiwi)
The Molala (Mollala, Molalla, Molele, La’tiwi) are a tribe of Western Oregon. They lived on the eastern periphery of the Willamette and Umpqua Valleys. There were at least…
J. Ross Browne Investigation as Reported to the SF Herald, 1857
Special Indian Agent J. Ross Browne famously came to the Northwest reservations in 1857 and wrote reports of the conditions of the tribes on the reservations. The following…
We Tricked them-We Are All One People
Aunt Pat in a low whispering voice was speaking to me before a Culture Committee meeting at Grand Ronde. Pat Allen was the chair and I was vice-chair,…
Etienne Lucier First Settler in the Willamette Valley
Etienne Lucier (Lussier, Lewis) was a French fur trapper who worked for the three principal fur companies in Oregon. He first arrived after traveling overland in 1811 as…
Catholic Education at Grand Ronde Reservation
The Federal government’s role regarding Indian people was to figure out what to do with them. Tribes were in the way of American expansion and, removal of the…
General Howard Visits Grand Ronde, 1876
In 1874, General Oliver Otis Howard, who had served in the Civil War was the Commander of the Department Columbia took command of any Indian conflicts in the…
Oregon Catholic Indian Education History
The Catholic Indian education program was initially supported by a policy decision by the U.S. Department of War in 1819. Then the USDOW was in charge of Indian…
Chelamela and Chemapho of the Long Tom Watershed
Chelamela and Chemapho Kalapuyans The Long Tom Watershed was the original homeland to two major tribes of Kalapuyan Indians, the Chelamela and Chemapho tribes. The Chelamela occupied the…
Modeste Demers Ethnographic Descriptions of the Tribes, 1839
Modeste Demers was assigned with the Oregon Territory, in 1837, at the same time as Francois Norbert Blanchet and they traveled together overland to their assignment in canoes…
Blanchet’s Mission to Vancouver, 1841
Reverend Blanchet traveled to Fort Vancouver after his mission to the Clackamas. In Vancouver, there was much more orderly town life, the chapels in the fort being served…
Blanchet’s Mission to the Cascades, 1841
Blanchet’s mission to the Cascades is perhaps his first visit to this location. His interactions with Tamakoun, also later called Tomaquin, are quite revealing of the tribe…
Blanchet’s Mission at the Walamette Village, 1841
The following is report from a Notice, Notice No. 4, part of a series of reports of the Catholic missionary Francois Norbert Blanchet (September 30, 1795 – June…
Blanchet’s Missions to the Clackamas, 1841-1842
The following is a Notice, Notice No. 4, part of a series of reports of the Catholic missionary Francois Norbert Blanchet from 1841 to 1842 about his missionary…
2019 Year in Review of ndnhistoryresearch blog
2019 has been a year of many changes for me and the blog. I am now fully employed at OSU in Anthropology and Native studies. This has been…
Petition to Survey the Reservation and to Live in Peace, September 20, 1869
Previous essays have addressed the poor treatment of the tribes on the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation into the late 1860s. In 1869 during his inauguration speech, newly elected…
Nichaqwali Watlala peoples at Blue Lake
The Nichaqwali people, a Cascades/Watlala Chinookan band, lived at the juncture of several cultural groups that lived in the larger region of the lower Columbia and who interacted…
Ka’hosadi Shasta Peoples of Oregon and California
Chief John, Tecumtum, was the leader of the Rogue River Confederacy for over a year in southwestern Oregon. The Confederacy formed when tribal bands on the Table Rock…
All Payments at One Time, the foresight of Chief Crooked Finger
Tribal treaties are said to never have been honored by the United States. Native communities from around the continent will state this, and it is a common enough…