Takelma

The Takelma (also Dagelma) are a Native American people who originally lived in the Rogue Valley of interior southwestern Oregon.

Their homeland was settled by Euroamericans late in the history of the American Frontier, because the surrounding mountainous country protected it.

Native Americans living near the Takelma but on more marginal and rugged land, such as the Shastan and Rogue River Athabascan peoples, survived the colonization period with their cultures and languages more intact.

Conflicts between the settlers and the indigenous peoples of both coastal and interior southwest Oregon escalated and became known as the Rogue River Wars.

The Takelma spent many years in exile before anthropologists began to interview them and record information about their language and lifeways.

The limiting factor in the Takelma diet was carbohydrates, since fish and game provided abundant fat and protein.

When these foods were not available, or for variety in their diet, Takelma women also gathered and processed the seeds of native grasses and tarweed (Madia elegans), dug roots and collected small fruits.

During the winter months, the Takelma lived in semi-subterranean homes dug partly into the insulating earth with superstructures built of vertically placed sugar pine planks.

Takelma homes bore structural similarities to the semi-subterranean homes of the Klamath and Modoc peoples to the east, who spoke languages in the Plateau Penutian family, and to those of the Shasta to the south, who spoke various Shastan languages (which may be part of the hypothetical Hokan family).

One historical account describes a rectangular, plank structure large enough to hold 100 people, but archaeologists in the region have typically found remains of much smaller dwellings.