For years, I have stated that the tribes did not have bison in Oregon, so they would not have made tipis. This is why the tribes have plankhouses and longhouses made from woven mats. Tipis require a large animal to cover the tipi with their hides. This has made sense to most people. We
Category: colonization
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 is true for the Siletz Reservation, for the handful of tribal people who could claim a ratified treaty, and for the Grand Ronde Reservation, where nearly all of the people
Much has been written and published of the Rogue River, Modoc, and Yakima Wars in the Oregon Territory. These wars were, by-and-large, reactions of the tribes to extreme attacks on their land, and their survival. There are number of other such conflicts that did not reach the status of war for historians. In the Umpqua
The Kalapuyan tribes of the Willamette Valley have lived here for more than 10,000 years, some 50,000 generations of people. The whole of the valley was owned by these tribes who had distinct yet overlapping territories. A few sections of the valley were owned by relative newcomers, the Molallans, who lived in the foothills
In 1850, the United States passed The Oregon Donation Land-claim Act. This act gave American men 640 acres, one square mile of free land in Oregon, allowed other claims by wives (160 acres), and children, and proved up on the previous land claims of other Americans. A recent manuscript by Julius Wilm (2017) points out
