A few years ago, I received a donation from the Charles Holmes estate in Salem, from the wife of Charles Holmes. The collection, are records from the career of Charles Holmes, a former teacher and staff member at Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Oregon. There were some 30 boxes of all sorts of documents that … [Read more…]
Canemah is now a neighborhood of Oregon City, but in the 1850s Canemah was a tribal village situated above the Willamette Falls on the eastern bank. The neighborhood today is steeped in history with a number of streets named for the native families who lived at the village, like ‘Apperson’. There native people would help … [Read more…]
Before settlers to Oregon, before the imposition of the names of Springfield and Eugene on the land, there were native villages named by the Kalapuya peoples. Nearly all of these villages began with the syllable Cha- or Tsa- and where spread throughout the Willamette valley. The name Chifin (Chafin, Chiffin) is a Kalapuya village name … [Read more…]
The Molalla Treaty of December 1855 is the last western Oregon treaty ever negotiated, that was eventually ratified. It was late because Joel Palmer heard late in 1855 that there were these other Molalla people still in the Cascades in southern Oregon that had yet to be negotiated with. We see these peoples also mentioned … [Read more…]
Head Quarters Dept. of the Pacific San Francisco 29th March 1854 My Dear General; I give you many thanks for your favor of the 18th ultimo. I am gratified to learn that there is a prospect of an increase of the Army. Our Empire is very large, and a large proportion requires military protection and … [Read more…]