A studio for the geography of the Pacific Northwest.

Land Acknowledgment

The whole coast, then the valley, then Portland

Mamook is based in Newport, in Lincoln County. Our work runs the length of the Oregon coast and inland to the Willamette Valley and Portland. This is what we know of those places, in order, and where we learned it. These nations govern their lands today. No nation has reviewed this text; corrections are welcome at [email protected].

Astoria and the Columbia: Clatsop and Chinook

The Clatsop lived from the mouth of the Columbia south to Tillamook Head; the Chinook lived across the river to the north; the Nehalem lived south of the Head. Fort Astoria was founded in 1811. From 1830 fever and smallpox followed, and populations fell by as much as 92 percent. In August 1851 the Tansy Point treaties were signed with the Lower Chinook, Wahkiakum, Willapa, Cathlamet and Clatsop. Congress never ratified them, and no payment or recognition followed. In 1898 the Clatsop and the northern Tillamook (the Nehalem and Tillamook Bay peoples) sued for the land taken without a ratified treaty and were paid a settlement in 1907. Clatsop descendants today belong to the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, the Chinook Indian Nation, which the United States does not recognize, and the Clatsop-Nehalem Confederated Tribes, formed in 2001.

Lincoln County: Salmon River, Siletz, Yaquina and Alsea

People have lived on Yaquina Bay for at least 5,000 years. On 9 November 1855 an executive order created the Coast Reservation, about 1.1 million acres, for roughly 20 tribes from the coast, southern Oregon and northern California, with sub-agencies at Alsea (Yachats), Yaquina and Salmon River. The treaty behind it was never ratified. After outsiders found Olympia oysters in Yaquina Bay, a December 1865 executive order cut a strip about twenty miles long, including the bay, out of the middle of the reservation; Newport was named on 4 July 1866. The reservation was cut by about three quarters by 1875. In 1894, 551 people received allotments and the remaining land was ceded at 74 cents an acre. The Western Oregon Indian Termination Act of 1954 ended federal recognition of the Siletz in 1956; the Siletz Restoration Act of 18 November 1977 restored it, the second terminated tribe in the country to be restored.

Siuslaw, Lower Umpqua, Coos and Coquille

The Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw negotiated a treaty in 1855 that was never ratified. They were terminated, and the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians were restored in 1984. The treaties the Coquille negotiated in the 1850s were also never ratified, and no reservation was created. The Coquille Indian Tribe was terminated in 1954 and restored on 28 June 1989.

Port Orford: the Quatomah and the Tututni coast

On 10 June 1851 William Tichenor landed nine armed men and a small cannon at a Quatomah village at Port Orford, to found a town there. The settlers' story of that day, the "battle" at Battle Rock, is contested: the ethnologist J. P. Harrington wrote that his Siletz informant said it "is mostly lies." Miners and settlers then moved up the Rogue River, mining destroyed the fish runs, and the Rogue River Wars of 1855-56 followed. Troops removed the peoples of the coast to the Coast Reservation.

The Willamette Valley: Kalapuya and Molalla

The Treaty with the Kalapuya, etc. was signed at Dayton on 22 January 1855 and ratified on 3 March 1855. It gave the whole Willamette Valley to the United States and removed the Kalapuya bands, the Molalla and the Clackamas, who had lived there for thousands of years, to the Grand Ronde Reservation. The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde were terminated in 1956 and restored in 1983.

Portland and Willamette Falls: Clackamas, Multnomah, Kathlamet and Tualatin

At Willamette Falls the Clackamas Chinook village of Walamt gave the river its name. The Clackamas controlled access to the salmon, steelhead and lamprey at the falls, and the Wasco, Multnomah, Yakama, Tualatin and Molalla came to trade for dried salmon and to ask for fishing rights. Portland stands on village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Chinook bands, Tualatin Kalapuya and Molalla. In 2018 the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde secured a state permit and platform to fish at the falls, 15 salmon a year for ceremonial use.

Sources

• Oregon Encyclopedia: Newport
• Oregon History Project: Acquiring Reservation Land
• Splitting the Coast Reservation: the oyster harvest rush, 1863-1866
• The 1851 Tansy Point treaty journal
• Clatsop and Tillamook people (Wikipedia)
• Western Oregon Indian Termination Act (Wikipedia)
• Oregon Encyclopedia: Battle Rock
• Oregon Blue Book: Coquille Indian Tribe
• 25 U.S.C. 714: Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw restoration
• Treaty with the Kalapuya, etc. (Wikipedia)
• Oregon Encyclopedia: Willamette Falls
• Portland Monthly: Willamette Falls access
• University of Oregon Portland: Land Acknowledgement