Siletz Tribal Council 1876

  The year 1876 appears to have been a key year to discuss further reductions of the Siletz Reservation. The original Coast reservation was a 1.1 million acre expand from near the Nestucca to just south of Florence, a 100 mile stretch of land, extending 20 miles inland to the east. In 1865 the removal of the Yaquina tract was done to appease white Americans wanting to harvest oysters in the coastal bays. In 1875 a further reduction of the southern Alsea Reservation, and the area north of the Salmon River caused a retraction of the reservation to only that … Continue reading Siletz Tribal Council 1876

Warm Springs Speeches 1876

It is well known that the Coast Reservation was reduced in 1865 and 1875 to make way for white settlement. A similar threat was posed by the federal government in 1876 to the tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation.  In the following speeches, they clearly did not want to remove, again. The speeches are remarkable in that they reveal that not everyone agreed with the hereditary chief of the reservation. They reveal that at least one chief colluded with the Indian agents to disempower the tribe. This would have been very easy to do in the early reservation system because … Continue reading Warm Springs Speeches 1876