Draining Lake Labish
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…
Tag: Molalla
Santiam Forks Band of Molalla
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…
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…
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…
La’tiwi, Northern Molalla, Placenames and Housing notes
Phillip Drucker’s field notes from the 1920s and 30s had him questioning many Native people from the region, from Grand Ronde and Siletz. Many of these people were…
The 1855 Umpqua Reservation Census
Some recent census research revealed a census I had not yet analyzed. Luckily, a brief search of my records found that I had previously collected the census, enabling…
When the Southern Molallas Moved to the Umpqua Reservation
In 1853, Joel Palmer Indian Superintendent for Oregon established the Umpqua Reservation in the inland Umpqua Valley. The September 19, 1853 Treaty with the Cow Creek Band of…
Traditional Sharing of the Cascades Range by Tribes
The assignment by anthropologists, historians, and linguists of the whole of the Oregon Cascades to the Molalla peoples since 1846 (Hale 1846) needs to be critically rethought. I…
Treaty with the Molala, Negotiated December 21, 1855, Ratified March 8, 1859
The Treaty with the Molala is the last treaty negotiated for western Oregon. Joel Palmer heard late in 1855, in fact in October, that there was a tribe…
The Willamette Valley Treaty (Treaty with the Kalapuya, Etc.) Signed January 22 & Ratified March 3, 1855
The Willamette Valley Treaty was designed to remove the tribes from western Oregon, from lands desired by American settlers. When the treaty was finally signed, on January 22th,…
The Battle of Abiqua, Second Battle of the Willamette Valley
The Battle of Abiqua In February 1848, six months after the Whitman Massacre, the settlers in the Willamette valley were very tense, concerned that the tribes would gather…