Year: 2019

colonization, columbia river, General History, Native Issues, Oregon indians, treaties1 Comment

Blanchet’s Mission to the Cascades, 1841

David G. Lewis, PhD

Blanchet’s mission to the Cascades is perhaps his first visit to this location. His interactions with Tamakoun, also later called Tomaquin, are quite revealing of the tribe and its divisions. The notation about villages on the two banks suggests a different leadership and some division in the tribe. Tamakoun does not suggest that the attentions of the Methodists or the Catholics are in any way undesirable only that there is a difference, yet he had become coverted to Catholic by this account. It is in this location that Blanchet’s ethnographic notes really show the tribal culture. His notes about the … Continue reading Blanchet’s Mission to the Cascades, 1841

colonization, columbia river, General History, Grand Ronde Reservation, Oregon indians1 Comment

Blanchet’s Mission at the Walamette Village, 1841

David G. Lewis, PhD

The following is report from a Notice, Notice No. 4, part of a series of reports of the Catholic missionary Francois Norbert Blanchet (September 30, 1795 – June 18, 1883) from 1841 to 1842 about his missionary conversion work among the tribes of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers, in the middle Chinookan area. Blanchet visits the villages at Willamette Falls, Clackamas, Vancouver, and the Cascades from May 1841 to early 1842. Blanchet had arrived in Oregon in 1839 and began holding sermons at St. Paul in the area of French Prairie, the north Willamette Valley. His first visitors would be … Continue reading Blanchet’s Mission at the Walamette Village, 1841

colonization, General History, Native Issues, Oregon indians2 Comments

Blanchet’s Missions to the Clackamas, 1841

David G. Lewis, PhD

The following is a Notice, Notice No. 4, part of a series of reports by the Catholic missionary Francois Norbert Blanchet (September 30, 1795 – June 18, 1883) from 1841 to 1842 about his missionary conversion work among the tribes of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers, in the middle Chinookan area. Blanchet visits the villages at Willamette Falls, Clackamas, Vancouver, and the Cascades from May 1841 to early 1842. Blanchet had arrived in Oregon in 1839 and began holding sermons at St. Paul in the area of French Prairie, the north Willamette Valley. His first visitations would be to the … Continue reading Blanchet’s Missions to the Clackamas, 1841

General History, Personal History2 Comments

2019 Year in Review of ndnhistoryresearch blog

David G. Lewis, PhD

2019 has been a year of many changes for me and the blog. I am now fully employed at OSU in Anthropology and Native studies. This has been very good for my finances and work in education and for finding a base of operations for my work. But, as I am now teaching 3-4 classes a term and working for advancement this leaves less time for researching, writing, and publishing on the blog. I need to begin publishing in a more professional manner and have begun mining my essays for ideas and content for a series of publications. The first … Continue reading 2019 Year in Review of ndnhistoryresearch blog

General History, Grand Ronde Reservation, Native Issues, Oregon Coast, Oregon indians, Siletz Reservation, treaties, Willamette ValleyLeave a comment

Petition to Survey the Reservation and to Live in Peace, September 20, 1869

David G. Lewis, PhD

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 President U.S. Grant stated that he would support a path to citizenship for tribes that became civilized. (In this essay I will not quibble with the idea of civilization even though we can rightly question which people were proving to be civilized and which were proving to be lawless and uncivilized.) Indian Agents took notice of Pres. Grant’s statement, which amounted to a change in federal Indian policy and began to ask … Continue reading Petition to Survey the Reservation and to Live in Peace, September 20, 1869