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…
Tag: Native Issues
Records of the Cascades Watlala Removal to Grand Ronde
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…
Palmer’s Ledger of Vouchers for the Willamette Valley Treaty
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…
A Policy of Forfeiture of Rights and Annuities under the Peace Treaty of 1853
In numerous essays on this blog I have noted that many of the tribes considered the most violent, and those who had participated in the wars in southwestern…
Forced to Pay for the Rogue River 1853 War
One of the most egregious of acts against the Rogue River tribes in southern Oregon was making them pay for the destruction of the property of the American…
Grand Ronde Chiefs Statements About Agriculture, 1862
An investigation at Grand Ronde and the agent precipitated this meeting of the chiefs. The Indian Agent was asking for them to produce their own food and was…
Yamhill Dogs Chase Comegys’ Hogs
A letter was delivered in person to Joel Palmer, Indian Superintendent of Oregon, in 1855 of a complaint of Jacob Comegys about his pigs being chased and killed…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Nicholas Day Saves the Umpqua Indians
The following story appeared in the Oregonian in 1900. Nicholas Day was an Indian agent who was hired by Joel Palmer to manage the Umpqua Indians. Day took…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Tribal Territorial Acknowledgements
Territorial acknowledgments have now become commonplace at most university functions at OSU. I have heard from many that the practice now is in nearly all universities in the…
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,…
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…