Tag: Oregon indiansPage 1 of 7
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , August 6th, 2022
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….
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , April 14th, 2022
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…
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , February 28th, 2022
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…
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , January 6th, 2022
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…
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , January 5th, 2022
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…
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , December 19th, 2021
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…
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , November 11th, 2021
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…
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , September 27th, 2021
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…
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , September 26th, 2021
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…
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , August 30th, 2021
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…
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , August 16th, 2021
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…
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , August 15th, 2021
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…
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , August 4th, 2021
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…
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , July 12th, 2021
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…
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , July 12th, 2021
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…
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , June 16th, 2021
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…
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , June 16th, 2021
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…
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , December 11th, 2020
In the early nineteenth century, the United States assumed ownership of all of the Oregon Territory through “right of discovery”, first adjudicated in the United States Supreme Court…

Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , October 26th, 2020
This letter from General Wool is remarkable for its transparency in revealing the actions and decisions of Governor Curry of Oregon. General George Law Curry was a two-time…

Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , October 25th, 2020
The following letters detail one side of the conversation with Joel Palmer, Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Oregon, and John Wool, commander of the Pacific Department. (I don’t…
Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , October 16th, 2020
In 1862 the Catholic Church of the United States made a proposal to open boarding schools to serve all of the Indian reservations primarily served by their own…

Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , September 18th, 2020
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…

Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , September 2nd, 2020
As noted by Dr. Mark Tveskov in his 2017 article “A “Most Disastrous” Affair: The Battle of Hungry Hill, Historical Memory, and the Rogue River War” (OHQ Vol….

Ethnohistory Research, LLC | David G. Lewis, PhD , August 30th, 2020
A good number of people have over the years shown some confusion about the identity of the tribal members at the Grand Ronde tribe. Many natives and non-natives…