When Joel Palmer was appointed to Superintendent of Indian Affairs in May 1853 he had a good working knowledge of the tribes but had never visited the southern Oregon coast. He began to scope out and plan how southwestern Oregon was to be managed as there were numerous tribes in that region. His first effort … [Read more…]
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 … [Read more…]
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 were a number of other such conflicts that did not reach the status of war for historians. In the … [Read more…]
Previous to the Americans and the British In Oregon, the tribes had numerous interrelationships with one another. Trade was a major part of the lives of all tribes. Some tribes had vast resources, but only in a few items were they specialized. The Chinookans, had vast amounts of dried salmon because of owning the best … [Read more…]
Our tribal lands have seen innumerable natural disasters over the millennium. Native people tried to interpret what was happening and preserved the history of the events in our oral histories. In the ethnographic era, (1870s-1940s) many of these stories were written down and preserved before, it was feared that, all languages and cultural traditions were … [Read more…]