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…
Tag: Native Issues
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
Ignoring Tribal History in a Contemporary Exhibit
On 10/26, 2019 I visited the Open house at the Oregon State Archives, Salem, OR, and was supremely disappointed at their new exhibit Rust Rot Ruin. which documents…
Erroneous Tropes in Narratives of Removal to the Coast Indian Reservation
Digging through previously collected digitized documents, I found several accounts of removal of the tribes to the Siletz Reservation. These are worthy of commentary for the historical origins…
Two Schools at Grand Ronde Indian Reservation, 1863
There are a few reports that open the windows wide to a vision of the reservation, its changes, its struggles, and its peoples. In the 1863 Grand Ronde…
Redskins Etc. as Racial Stereotypes
Native peoples of the America were thought of in early philosophy as being Red Indians, fitting perfectly into a color wheel of peoples of the earth, White people…