Native American peoples of Oregon

[1] The Lewis and Clark party spent its time among various tribal groups categorized as Chinook — peoples speaking dialects of the Chinookan language, which included the Kathlamet, Wasco and Wishram, Clatsop, and Clackamas nations.

A written account by a fur trader was left to posterity by Ross Cox, who arrived on May 10, 1812, at the newly constructed Fort Astoria, located about 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Tongue Point at the mouth of the Columbia.

[2] Writing two decades after the fact, Cox recalled tension between the Indigenous population of the region and fur traders related to the attempted and actual theft of supplies by brazen native males, sometimes met with violence on the part of the whites.

[3] Cox recalled the Chinook-speaking people he first encountered outside the fort as physically repugnant: "They were the most uncouth-looking objects; and not strongly calculated to impress us with a favourable opinion of aboriginal beauty, or the purity of Indian manners.

Their eyes were black, piercing, and treacherous; their ears slit up, and ornamented with strings of beads; the cartilage of their nostrils perforate and adorned with pieces of hyaquau placed horizontally; ... and their bodies besmeared with whale oil, gave them an appearance horribly disgusting.

With the same auricular, olfactory, and craniological peculiarities, they exhibited loose hanging breasts, short dirty teeth, skin saturated with blubber, bandy legs, and a waddling gait; while their only dress consisted of a kind of petticoat, or rather kilt, formed of small strands of cedar bark twisted into cords, and reaching from the waist to the knee.

"[4]Despite his physical aversion, Cox and his associates traveled freely to the villages of several tribes that dotted the mouth of the Columbia, noting that "the natives generally received us with friendship and hospitality.

[10] Forced to carry provisions around rapids again several days later, the party again ran into trouble with the attempted theft of unattended goods, which was met with musket fire and the wounding of one of the perpetrators.

The females, also, were distinguished by a degree of attentive kindness, totally removed from the disgusting familiarity of the kilted ladies below the rapids, and equally free from an affection of prudery; prostitution is unknown among them; and I believe no inducement would tempt them to commit a breach of chastity.

"[15]Despite the myriad of tribal entities spread throughout the Oregon Country, their historical occupation and implicit claim to the land was barely noted and not recognized by white Americans in the East.

In 1828, New England teacher Hall Jackson Kelley, a leading exponent of white colonization of the Oregon Country, hailed the region as "the most valuable of all the unoccupied parts of the earth" in a memorial to Congress.

Waves of disease swept Native American communities between 1824 and 1829, with smallpox, measles, and an unknown ailment described at the time as "ague fever" annihilating tens of thousands.

[18] On December 11, 1838, US Senator Lewis F. Linn of Missouri introduced a bill calling for the occupation of the Oregon Country region north of 42 degrees latitude and west of the Rocky Mountains.

Missionaries headed by the Methodist Jason Lee were the advance guard of European American colonization, with a large "Indian church" established at The Dalles in 1839 in an effort to convert members of the Klickitat tribe to Christianity.

[21] Lee and his party traversed the region among a tolerant native population, which, as one early historian noted, was found by the missionaries to be "easily impressed, and apt at imitating the forms of devotion.

"[22] Ever since the first arrival of European trappers and traders, the native peoples of the Columbia Basin were swept by epidemics of newly introduced diseases that annihilated a vast percentage of the population.

[28] Not long after his arrival at Fort Vancouver, the de facto head of the American presence in the Oregon Country found himself tested by worsening relations between white settlers and the various indigenous peoples.

One contemporary settler, the naturalized English expatriate John Beeson, left Illinois for Oregon in March 1853, arriving in the Rogue River Valley at the end of September.

[35] He remained in Oregon for three years before leaving, repelled by what he saw, returning to the East to write a book about the abuses suffered by the native population at the hands of white settlers.

Thus the quality of the food, and the poisons, in connection with a stimulating atmosphere, excite their baser passions; and, in the absence of moral restraint and civil law, they seek indulgence by outrages on the persons of defenseless Indians.

Any American father or mother can easily imagine what would be the fate of their daughters if, unprotected and isolated, in valleys and ravines, surrounded by hosts of men of the class and under the circumstances above described.

[36] It was to no small extent this trade of flesh for firearms that provided the tribes of Southern Oregon with sufficient means to maintain a resistance during the Rogue River War of 1855–1856.

[39] This claim was picked up by the Sub-Indian Agent for Southern Oregon, who convened a mass meeting in a Willamette Valley town and formally made the call to raise 3,000 troops from the citizenry to do battle with the menace.

[39] Governor George Law Curry obliged the popular demand and issued a proclamation declaring war, urging that a volunteer militia take the field immediately.

[46] The decade following the implementation of both acts saw the signing of treaties with indigenous groups throughout the Oregon territory, including the Warm Springs and Wasco tribes (1855), the Siletz (1855), the Cow Creek band (1853), the Umatilla (1855), and the Kalapuya (1855).

[49] In the 1950s, Oregon tribes rapidly lost their rights to legal jurisdiction and federal recognition, as the United States government brought an end to their responsibilities towards indigenous nations that were previously guaranteed by treaty agreements.

[50] Additionally, in a hearing for the proposed termination act, Orme Lewis, then-Assistant Secretary of the Interior, noted that: "... the Klamath Tribe and the individual members thereof have in general attained sufficient skill and ability to manage their own affairs without special Federal assistance.

[56] Following the termination of their trust relationships with the federal government, six indigenous tribes successfully engaged in decades of lobbying and Congressional hearings in an effort to regain their lands and have their sovereignty recognized again.

[62] In 2018, the Western Oregon Tribal Fairness Act restored over 17 thousand acres of land to the Cow Creek Band, which are now held in trust for them by the US federal government.

[74] The commission is made up of 13 members who are nominated by local tribes and selected by the legislature, and is intended to be a means of communication between state and tribal governments to inform their respective decision-making processes.