Much has been written about the impact of pandemics on indigenous populations. Columbus and his exploratory contemporaries brought slavery (some tribes had slavery already) and conquest to the new worlds, and that conquest was greatly aided by the fact that the conquistadores passed on numerous illnesses, diseases and viruses, to […]
In 1871, the BIA had just gotten some direction from President Ulysses S. Grant, in fact, a change in national Indian policy, to go ahead and train the Indians to be civilized so that they may earn their way to citizenship. The reservation at Grand Ronde had just been surveyed […]
The subject of slavery in Oregon goes back to the first wave of settlers who came to the territory in 1844 and after. These first settlers combined with a few hardy souls who had arrived earlier and had been fur traders and explorers, formed the first territorial laws in a […]
The following section of a letter to General Joel Palmer details that at least one chief Soc-te-la knew they were to remove and was working to gather his people in preparation for such a move. It is unclear from the letter which tribe Soc-te-la belongs to and the letter mentions […]
As Commissioner of Indian Affairs, John Collier was a long-term advocate for Indian tribes. In the 1920s, John Collier, a trained sociologist, led efforts in Washington, D.C. to repeal the Dawes Indian Allotment Act (1887) and its overt attempt to assimilate Indians. John Collier was very critical of the Indian […]
