Integrating Tribal Perspectives into an Oregon Trail history.
Recent work on correcting histories of settlers societies has been highly popular. The 2019 Exhibit at Five Oaks Museum, Washington County by Stephanie Littlebird Fogel
Recent work on correcting histories of settlers societies has been highly popular. The 2019 Exhibit at Five Oaks Museum, Washington County by Stephanie Littlebird Fogel
Recently, I was made aware of another alternative story of the Battle of Battle Creek. Previously, I published an essay about stories of Klamath and
In the years following the Oregon Indian wars of the 1850s, there were continuous claims by settler for losses due to Indian depredations. The claims
The settlement of Eugene and the whole southern valley settlement centers was guided by advice from the Kalapuyans and the presence of seasonal wetlands on the plains. Two…
Joel Palmer was an extremely busy man in 1856. In the midst of traveling back and forth across Oregon, he was ordering supplies, directing employees, and negotiating with…
In the history of treaty making , there were two treaty periods for western Oregon, 1851, and 1853 to 1855. The 1851 treaties, 19 of them, were negotiated…
This year I tried to get out there into the field when the camas is beginning to erupt from the ground. I am not sure I have seen…
In recent work I have begun to document the various wetlands of the Willamette Valley from before settler changes took effect. Our best, and most
In 1853 Joel Palmer, newly appointed Indian Superintendent of Oregon, was working to keep the peace between the tribes and settlers in Oregon. The plan was to remove…
A subject which has had little clarity in the past is when were the Umpqua and Southern Kalapuya, the Yoncallas, resettled to the Umpqua Reservation at Coles Valley.…
In 1856, Joel Palmer had some 4000 Natives removed from their homelands to the Coast and Grand Ronde Indian Reservations. Up to at least April of 1856 the…
The Charles Wilkes Exploring expedition came to Oregon in August 1841. The expedition split into two parts with some of the expedition venturing up the Columbia, and a…
The Chetco Indians, perhaps more than nearly any other tribe on the Oregon coast, were repeatedly attacked by racist white settlers before their removal. In a previous set…
The experiences of the Grave Creek Indians of southwestern Oregon mirror those of the other tribes in the region. They however hardly survived the 1850s as most of…
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…
There are numerous oral histories from tribal people in Oregon about catastrophic events, fires, volcanic eruptions, floods, tsunamis. Many of these stories are fantastically imagined and are likely…
The area of the south bank of the Columbia between the Sandy and Willamette Rivers is of particular interest to the tribes who once lived there. Historically, there…
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…
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…
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…
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…
In March 1855 there was formed a temporary reservation for Champinefu Kalapuyans at Corvallis. This was one of over a dozen such temporary reservations, sometimes called encampments for…
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…
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…