In the 1860s the issue of education was at the fore of the duties of the Indian agents at Grand Ronde. Years of letters complained about irregular federal funding and support for this service to the tribes, a service supported by provisions in most of the ratified treaties. Still further Indian Agents were working to … [Read more…]
On November 28th, 1882, Tom Gilbert, a native man enrolled in the Grand Ronde tribe allegedly murdered fellow Grand Ronde Reservation inhabitants Wapato Dave Yatskawa and his wife Ponomapa on their allotment on the Grand Ronde Reservation. Gilbert was reportedly drunk and had traveled from Willamina, and reportedly attacked the two with a hatchet, nearly … [Read more…]
Into the last decades of the 19th century, the Indian agents at Grand Ronde struggled with many aspects of assimilating the tribes to American culture. In fact, there was a meeting in 1871 in Salem, at the First Methodist Church with all the tribal leaders in Oregon to convince them to give up their … [Read more…]
Some letters from the Natives at Grand Ronde are remarkable in the details they reveal of how the people are being treated by the Indian Agents. Shilequa’s (Selquia) letter of 1888 is one such letter, describing in great detail, and with awareness of the likelihood that the Agent is breaking the rules, of many … [Read more…]
The natives at the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation underwent extreme hardships. Most of the early years they starved from lack of good effective administration by the federal employees and lack of funding from the federal government. They had only one doctor and rare access to effective medicines. Many people died at an early age because … [Read more…]