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 five concentrations of them: The Northern Molalla were situated in Dickie Prairie on the other side of the ridge from the contemporary town of Molalla, their village … [Read more…]
Aunt Pat in a low whispering voice was speaking to me before a Culture Committee meeting at Grand Ronde. Pat Allen was the chair and I was vice-chair, and I had learned not too much earlier that Pat and I are distantly related through the Tom family, probably called shirt-tail cousins among the rez folks. … [Read more…]
The Nichaqwali people, a Cascades/Watlala Chinookan band, lived at the juncture of several cultural groups that lived in the larger region of the lower Columbia and who interacted along the Columbia River and at what is now called Blue Lake. The village itself sits within the territories of two major ethnographic tribes on the Columbia, … [Read more…]
On 10/26, 2019 I visited the Open house at the Oregon State Archives, Salem, OR, and was supremely disappointed at their new exhibit Rust, Rot, & Ruin, which documents the beginning of key industries in Oregon through the boomtowns founded by gold mining, logging, farming and ranching, and other mining. Some of these industries produced … [Read more…]
Phillip Drucker’s field notes from the 1920s and 30s had him questioning many Native people from the region, from Grand Ronde and Siletz. Many of these people were not living on reservations. His Molalla notes are brief compared to his work on the Tolowa and Clackamas. They are embedded in with Coos and Tolowa and … [Read more…]