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…
Tag: Native Issues
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…
Enforced Assimilation in Tribal Correspondence about the Grand Ronde Boarding School
The natives at the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation underwent extreme hardships. Most of the early years they starved from lack of good effective administration by the federal employees…
John Wacheno on Fishing Rights and Land Inheritance, 1931
In 1931, John Wacheno of Grand Ronde tesified before a subcommittee from the Committee of Indian Affairs at Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Oregon. The subcommittee is investigating…
Joel Palmer’s Defiant Cattle Drive Through Grand Ronde, 1874
In 1874, Joel Palmer was again an independent contractor for the Indian service, after having completed a two-year stint as the Indian Agent for the Siletz Agency. Palmer…
Acknowledgement is Long Past Due for Attempts to Exterminate the Tribes of Oregon
Presently, there is an apology bill being considered in the Oregon State Senate for the Modoc Indian War of 1872-1873. This apology is long past due to the…
Methodists in Oregon
Reverend Jason Lee established the first Methodist Mission near Champoeg in 1835. By 1839 the mission had been damaged by flood waters and Lee established another farm and school…
What did Omission from the Annual Tribal Census Mean to Grand Ronde?
In 1907, the Indian agent at Grand Ronde began redacting, or not listing, native peoples at Grand Ronde from the annual tribal census. The agent was treating the…
Pre-Anthropologists and Colonization
Anthropology as a science grew out of needs of colonizing countries to gain more information about the frontier. The United States in the early 19th century needed to…
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…
Is Climate Change Always the Reason for Wildfires?
Recently, in the media the subject of climate change has again become popular. In NPR interviews scientists have discussed how reporters need to not just be reporting the…
Did the non-ratification of the Coast Treaty cause Grand Ronde to become permanent?
The Grand Ronde Indian reservation was a sudden change in plans for Joel Palmer in 1855. When the Rogue River war began, and other conflicts with tribes north…
Popular American Cultural Theft of Totem Poles
The story of the Ritz Sauna Totem pole is rich with cultural history. The Ritz Sauna has been associated with the Oregon Country Fair since the beginnings of…
Savage System
Often, I address white American attitudes towards native peoples. How historians have ignored whole sections of our history, racism and genocide against native peoples, the lack of education…
Lessons from the Indian Internment at Indian Reservations and Boarding Schools
From the 1830’s (Indian Removal Act) to 1900 most of the Tribal Reservations were established in the United States holding a population of over 350,000 people. The people…
Are Tribes Ready for Termination, Again?
Are Tribes Ready for Termination, Again? In the past few weeks a number of federal administration officials have made statements which suggest that a concerted effort is underway…
Conditions of the Alsea Indians and the Salmon River Encampment 1876-1878
As addressed in previous essays, in about 1875, most Indian annuities for the Western Oregon tribes ended because the 20 year payments were exhausted. This Continue reading