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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
Oregon City, the settlement town, was established by Hudsons Bay company in 1829, but there was already a Clowewalla village in this location for more than 10,000 years.…
Chief Kiesno was one of the most powerful chiefs on the Columbia at the time of the fur trade and American settlement. He was related to tribes throughout…
In this new period of “wokeness” there are calls for the elimination of racist names and statues from our institutions. Christopher Columbus statues have been torn from…
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…
Much has been written about the impact of pandemics on indigenous populations. Columbus and his exploratory contemporaries brought slavery and conquest to the new worlds, and that conquest…
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…
Each archive I enter I find new information about the native peoples of that county. Generally, the stories are of early encounters with a few native people, experiences…
The Kalapuyans, for their part, accepted the settlement of the whites at first, as they saw the great wealth in new things brought to them, metals, fabrics, weapons,…
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…
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…
The following two letters are an example of how the settlers could not live with the tribal people having any resources. The settlers in 1854 had won, and…
William Martin, the Sub-Indian Agent of the Umpqua and Coos Bay was appointed to the position by Jole Palmer in June 1853. He worked to understand the tribes…
When Joel Palmer was appointed to Superintendent of Indian Affairs in May 1853 he had a good working knowledge of the tribes but had never visited the southern…
The first Rogue River War was a series of skirmishes and battles between mainly gold miners and the tribes. The miners had no regard for the tribes and…
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…