Indian Affairs 1856: Joel Palmer’s Diary
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…
Tag: Siletz Reservation
The First Census of the Coast and Grand Ronde Reservations: 1856
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…
A Policy of Forfeiture of Rights and Annuities under the Peace Treaty of 1853
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…
The Second Plague: Indian Reservations
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…
John Collier and Indian Termination Policy
As Commissioner of Indian Affairs, John Collier was a long-term advocate for Indian tribes. In the 1920s, John Collier, a trained sociologist, led efforts in Washington, D.C. to…
J. Ross Browne Investigation as Reported to the SF Herald, 1857
Special Indian Agent J. Ross Browne famously came to the Northwest reservations in 1857 and wrote reports of the conditions of the tribes on the reservations. The following…
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…
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…
Joel Palmer Returning Indians and Feeding Natives, Siletz 1871
Joel Palmer was the Indian Agent at the Siletz Agency in 1871 and had responsibilities, as emphasized in his 1871 journal, over continuing to removing Indians from the…
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…
Nachicolcho or Siletz: a Place on the Oregon Coast
The Siletz placename is something of a mystery. Leo J. Frachtenberg, the ethnologist assigned to collect native languages on the Grand Ronde and Siletz reservations in about 1913, …
Battle Rock the First Colonization on the Southern Oregon Coast
In July 1851, Captain William Tichenor decided to begin his project to colonize and claim the Port Orford area. He envisioned that the establishment of a town at…
Estuaries Saved the Coastal Tribes: Section 2- Removal and Exposure
Removal of the western Oregon tribes to the reservations was a tumultuous affair. Caravans from the Umpqua and Table Rock reservations to place in the dead of winter…
Remarkably Good Health … except for the deaths; Siletz Health report 1863
Reservation Health Reports previous to the 1870’s are fairly rare. there are about two reports a year for each reservation. The annual reports also have some health information,…
We are Treated like Slaves and are Starving: Siletz Chiefs send their Remarks to the President 1862
In the 1860’s the western Oregon reservations were still struggling with feeding all the Indians despite promises by Indian agents, and the treaties, that when they removed,…
Meacham’s Final Appeal to Fairly Pay the Tribes Removed to the Coast Reservation.
Albert B. Meacham was an Indian agent in the 1860’s and 70’s and oversaw some changes in the reservations. He attempted to give the tribes some voice in…
Estuaries Saved the Coastal Tribes: Joel Palmer’s Plan in 1855
I have previously written about how the coastal tribes were relocated to several river estuaries within the Coast Reservation (Siuslaw, Yachats, Alsea, Nashesne, Siletz and Umpqua). There 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…
Oregon Native Place Names in the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, Part 1
In the map collections of Oregon Historical Society there is a selection of Coast Survey maps. Most of these maps date from 1874 and there are some later.…
Devil’s Lake and Salmon River Encampment
Devil’s Lake is in Lincoln City, in fact it is the only such lake and state park completely contained within a city in Oregon. The Continue reading
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
Siletz Tribal Council 1876
The year 1876 appears to have been a key year to discuss further reductions of the Siletz Reservation. The original Coast reservation was a Continue reading
Surviving Oregon Native Languages; Online Sources and Links
Oregon Tribal Languages have been endangered for over 100 years. From an original base of some 100 languages and dialects, the number of surviving Continue reading