Siletz.Net

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Oregon Century pt 3
KDRV-TV
By Ron Brown
March 13, 2009

NEAR ASHLAND, Ore. -- The settlement of Oregon by white immigrants began well before statehood in 1859.

When the settlers came into Southern Oregon in the early 1850's, they were not alone. Thousands of Native Americans had been here for centuries, but found sharing the rivers, valleys and resources difficult.

Most settlers called the Takelma, Shasta, Latgawa, Umpqua, and several other bands or tribes 'Rogues'.

"The French called them that because they were a little antagonistic, they didn't take well to people moving in," says Southern Oregon Historical Society Interpreter Tom Smith.

For a hunting-food gathering people, local natives had a lot to enjoy here.

"Deer, elk, antelope, steelhead, salmon, everything they needed. And plants like the camas and apoes and things like that were here. And they had a very diversified diet," says Smith.

But when miners swarmed in and started muddying up the creeks and rivers, and settlers started fencing off fields and meadows and stopped natives from traditional harvest of bulbs, acorns, and other plants, fights began to break out.

A monument erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution commemorates the treaty that was signed September 10th, 1853 with the Rogue River Indians. However, that wasn't the end of the trouble. The Rogue River Indian War in 1855 finally resulted in the expulsion of most Native Americans from Jackson and Josephine counties.

Within two years of the treaty, trouble broke out again, and soon there were massacres on both sides. With few regular soldiers in the territory, volunteers, some with revenge on their minds, eventually forced the outgunned natives to surrender.

"To lose your ancestral land, that was the main heartbreak for everybody I believe." says Smith.

Survivors were forced to march to the coast, where they were put on a ship and taken to the Siletz and Grand Ronde Reservation, forced to live with strangers and old enemies, and dismal coastal weather. Most died.

However, not every one left. One, named Umpqua Joe, warned miners that attackers were coming, and when the war was over, he was given a small "reservation" near Galice on the Rogue River. His daughter Mary, known as Indian Mary, and her daughter, lived out their lives there, and the reservation became Indian Mary Park.

The falls near Gold Hill, called Tilomikh by natives, is now the location of a revived salmon ceremony that was practiced here for centuries.

"The main problem with native people here is their whole life is around the rivers and the mountains. And when the miners came in, especially when they started using hydraulics and all that, and just tearing the rivers up, it ruined the fish, and that ruined their life. To me, that'd be very understandable. I'd fight in a minute," says Smith.

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