An introduction

The history of the State of Oregon is short. The history of people in this place is much longer. A non-Native Oregonian can claim, at most, eight generations — Native Oregonians claim hundreds. Early white settlers predicted that Natives would fade away and disappear from Oregon. They were wrong.

The United States government recognizes over 50 tribes on nine reservations in the State of Oregon — a result of ratified treaties and through executive actions by a U.S. president and federal adjudicated procedures. Hundreds of bands and tribes were consolidated onto reservations, some of them far from their homelands. Over the years, the government cut away at reservation boundaries through treaties, federal laws, and war. The U.S. Congress targeted Oregon tribes in 1954 with Public Laws 587 and 588, known as Termination, which ended the trust relationships that the treaties had established. Members of sixty-three Oregon tribes and bands endured the deleterious effects of Termination, including the loss of their land and community. The experiences of Indigenous people in Oregon over generations, including those who were removed from the state, are essential to understanding the history of Oregon.

Beginning in 1975, some Oregon tribes gained back their sovereignty and their land trust rights with Restoration — legislation that was the result of years of advocacy. Since then, many tribes have purchased or negotiated for the land they lost, an effort that continues to this day. Some tribes who have not been federally recognized continue to seek recognition. Their histories are also part of the Oregon story.

Much of the early written record of Native people in what became the Oregon Country is from non-Natives who had limited and sporadic interactions with Indigenous residents and who burdened those encounters with biases based on fear, ignorance, and indifference. As a result, writers of history books, school primers, and literature of all kinds created flawed and inaccurate narratives that have persisted into the twenty-first century. Native people have been telling and preserving their history for thousands of years, through practices such as oral traditions, place-naming, art, and ceremony. Today, Native historians and other scholars are working to retrieve a history that is honest, accurate, and revealing.

SHE-WHO-WATCHES, THE NAMES ARE A PRAYER

For David Sohappy, April 25, 1925–May 7, 1991

My humanness is an embellished tongue,

the bell, a yellow mouth of September’s

moon beats outward. She speaks for all

the names that clang in memorial.

--Elizabeth Woody (Warm Springs, Yakama, Navajo), Poet Laureate

Map of Indian Reservations in Oregon

The first treaty between Indigenous people and the United States government was in 1778. The agreement, in form and purpose, resembled those the U.S. made with all sovereign nations--pacts agreed on by both parties to determine land cessions and economic relations between the United States and Indian Nations. By 1832, Congress had redefined tribal nations as domestic groups (that is, part of the United States) and dependent on the federal government. The language and intent of subsequent treaties changed, based on America's assumed control over Indian Nations and its expressed purpose to occupy Native homelands. That occupation was contingent on the removal of Indians by any means necessary, which often led to violent, even inhumane assaults on Native people.

The treaties signed in Oregon, beginning in the 1840s, were of this kind. In negotiations, federal agents and tribal headmen both agreed to treaty stipulations. Federal agents often acted with urgency, warning Indian negotiators to agree quickly or risk white incursions and violence. The reservations established by treaty, whose boundaries were heavily determined by the settlement and demands of whites, were confederated, which meant that several tribes were treaty signatories. Some reservations were not created through treaties but by presidential executive order or federal adjudicated procedures. The federal government now recognizes nine tribes in Oregon. Their reservations are managed and governed by each tribal Nation, and the land is held in trust by the U.S. government.