Larger groups of settlers and miners entered the area, consuming without restrictions the natural resources on which the Indians relied for survival, competing for game and fish, and chopping down entire forests of oak trees.

[4] In 1827, an HBC expedition led by Peter Skene Ogden made the first direct contact between the European and the inland Rogue River inhabitants when he crossed the Siskiyou Mountains to look for beaver for the fur trade.

[8] Later called the Applegate Trail, it passed through the Rogue and Bear Creek valleys and crossed the Cascade Range between present-day Ashland and south of Upper Klamath Lake.

[10] Despite fears on both sides, violence in the watershed in the 1830s and 1840s was limited; "Indian seemed interested in speeding whites on their way, and they were happy to get through the region without being attacked.

[13] After native people attacked a group of miners returning along the Rogue in 1850, former territorial governor Joseph Lane negotiated a peace treaty with Apserkahar, a leader of the Takelma.

It promised protection of Indigenous rights and safe passage through the Rogue Valley for European miners and settlers.

[16] John P. Gaines, the new territorial governor, negotiated a new treaty with some but not all of the Indian bands, removing them from Bear Creek and other tributaries on the south side of the main stem.

[18] As the white population increased and Indian losses of land, food sources, and personal safety mounted, bouts of violence upstream and down continued through 1854–1855.

[20]Suffering from cold, hunger, and disease on the Table Rock Reservation, a group of Takelma returned to their old village at the mouth of Little Butte Creek in October 1855.

[21] By then, fighting had also ended near the coast, where, before retreating upstream, a separate group of natives had killed about 30 whites and burned their cabins near what later became Gold Beach.

The Native Americans were camped with their women and children[28] on the top of a hill, with the soldiers located across a narrow ravine about 1,500 feet deep.

[28] Two hundred of the Native Americans were in the mountains southwest of present-day Roseburg[28] armed with muzzleloaders, bows, and arrows and managed to hold off a group of "more than 300 ... dragoons, militiamen and volunteers".