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
Category: Native Issues
In 1875, the United States Congress passed an act, March 3, 1875, to reduce the Coast Reservation. This act, terminated the Alsea Reservation, that section on the south, and opened that section to white settlement. The previous act in 1865 (President Andrew Johnson signing the Executive Order of December 21, 1865) had eliminated a section
Once the tribes were removed to the reservations, additional work began to civilize them. The Indian Agents and teachers disregarded the tribe’s cultures and previous life-ways and immediately began a program of education. Adults got their education through changing the ways they used the land. No longer were the tribes allowed to freely travel about
In recent years, in the State of Oregon, there have been some positive signs that the state has finally accepted that there are Native people, with history, in this state. The state legislature passed a law that helps to make Tribal history an essential and vital part of the state’s public education system (SB13). The
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
