Camas and Micro-seasonality at Minto-Brown Park
We all are aware of the annual seasons, winter, spring, summer, and fall, but in the growing cycle of the plants of the Willamette Valley there are micro-seasons…
Tag: Willamette Valley
Seasonal Wetlands and Minto-Brown Island Park
It seems important to tribes that if they are truly to become restored, and decolonized, they need to be culturally restored by helping to decolonize their lands and…
Camas Journal May 2, 2022
I revisited Bush Park today to tour the other areas of camas. I began at the “Picnic” area, south side of the park at its upper level and…
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…
The Southern Exploring Expedition and The Kalapuyans
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…
Draining Wapato Lake
In Oregon, we have the well-known Wapato Lake, near Gaston. The lake originally was the center of seasonal activities of the Tualatin Kalapuyans (Atfalati) who lived near and…
Draining Lake Labish
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…
Native Salem exhibit opens to the Public November 12th 2021
This summer I was approached by the Bush Art Museum to do something for Native American month. Over the period of several months discussion we centered the exhibit…
Santiam Forks Band of Molalla
The Santiam Forks Band of Molalla is not as well known as the Northern Molalla. We have had a few stories and while there is some information in…
Palmer’s Ledger of Vouchers for the Willamette Valley Treaty
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…
After Halting Native Burning, Came Grasshoppers
Barely ten years following the stopping of tribes setting fires in the Willamette and Umpqua valleys, signs of the change visited the settlers. Settlers were visited with scourges…
Champinefu Temporary Reservation at Corvallis
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…
Removal of Four Tribes from the Umpqua Reservation 1855-1856
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…
Dave Yachkawa becomes Tualatin Chief 1864
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…
Cast to the Edge: the Falls View Rancheria in Oregon City
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.…
An Early Account of Native People Near Falls City
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…
Agent of Rebirth, Kalapuyan Culture in Linn County
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,…
Dart Introduces the Clackamas Treaty to the US Senate
Anson Dart departed from Oregon in late 1851 after completing the negotiation of 19 treaties in Oregon with tribes. Dart had replaced the Willamette Treaty Commission in June…
Soc-te-la Chief of the Luckimute Kalapuya People
The following section of a letter to General Joel Palmer details that at least one chief Soc-te-la knew they were to remove and was working to gather his…
Ancient History of the Molala (La’tiwi)
The Molala (Mollala, Molalla, Molele, La’tiwi) are a tribe of Western Oregon. They lived on the eastern periphery of the Willamette and Umpqua Valleys. There were at least…
Etienne Lucier First Settler in the Willamette Valley
Etienne Lucier (Lussier, Lewis) was a French fur trapper who worked for the three principal fur companies in Oregon. He first arrived after traveling overland in 1811 as…
Chelamela and Chemapho of the Long Tom Watershed
Chelamela and Chemapho Kalapuyans The Long Tom Watershed was the original homeland to two major tribes of Kalapuyan Indians, the Chelamela and Chemapho tribes. The Chelamela occupied the…
Modeste Demers Ethnographic Descriptions of the Tribes, 1839
Modeste Demers was assigned with the Oregon Territory, in 1837, at the same time as Francois Norbert Blanchet and they traveled together overland to their assignment in canoes…
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…