Battle of Big Meadows (detail) Sketch by Caughey OrHi 78935

The arrival of Euro Americans in southwest Oregon shattered Native societies. After brief but brutal warfare broke out between Indians and settlers in the Rogue River Valley during the summer of 1853, Native inhabitants signed a treaty ceding most of the Bear Creek Valley in exchange for a reservation near Table Rock.

However, lack of food, a severe winter, and widespread disease ravaged families on the Table Rock Reservation. In October 1855, when a group of Takelma returned to their old village at the mouth of Little Butte Creek on the upper Rogue River, volunteer militia attacked them, killing twenty-three men, women, and children. Realizing they had no security, the Indians fled the reservation for the Rogue River Canyon, attacking miners and settlers along the river from Gold Hill to Galice Creek. Confronted by pursuing volunteer militia and regular army troops in the Rogue River Canyon, the Indians inflicted heavy casualties on the poorly trained troops. The Battle of Hungry Hill, as it was known by the defeated, stood as a major victory for the Indians. In November, troops and volunteers again advanced into the Rogue Canyon, encountering the Indians below Whiskey Creek. Nearly 150 Indian men and their families camped on the south side of the river at Black Bar. When soldiers attempted to launch a surprise attack on the encampment, the Indians heard the noise of their axes as they felled trees to build rafts. The Indians fired on the exposed volunteers, defeating their pursuers.

After several desperate battles—the last at Big Bend on the lower Rogue River—the Indians faced defeat. In the spring of 1856, a combined force of nearly 200 volunteers reached Ditch Creek on the north shore of the Rogue and fired into the Indian camp on the opposite shore. As many as thirty Indians died during the all-day assault at present-day Battle Bar. This loss, combined with hardships suffered during the long winter, forced the survivors to capitulate. Throughout that summer and following winter, “licensed” hunters killed and captured Indians remaining alive in the region.

In the winter of 1856 authorities marched 400 Indians from Table Rock 200 miles north to the newly established reservation at Grand Ronde in Yamhill County in the Willamette Valley. Soldiers loaded the bands of people that surrendered at Big Bend onto a steamer at Port Orford and transported them, via the Columbia and Willamette rivers and then overland, to the Siletz Reservation near the Oregon coast.

Forced to live in an unfamiliar environment among people with different backgrounds, southwestern Oregon Indians lived and died in despair. Disease decimated the Siletz Reservation population. The number of people counted at 2,026 in 1856 fell to 483 in 1900. In subsequent years, Euro Americans forced their ideals of “civilization” on the survivors and gradually the native languages, oral traditions, and customs diminished.

In the twentieth century, descendants of these peoples struggled back from the edge of extinction to face a new era. After the federal government terminated their status in the 1950s, tribal members fought to reclaim some of the land allotted to them in the nineteenth century. Today, tribal governments have a greater degree of control over their political and economic future, and have developed programs to revive cultural traditions and landscapes of sacred value. Native people’s long-lasting identification with the land of their ancestors has inspired them as they face a changing modern world.

© Kay Atwood & Dennis J. Gray, 2003

Themes: People and the Environment,Social Relations,Resettlement

Regions: Southwestern Oregon

Date: 1850-1950

Author: Kay Atwood & Dennis J. Gray

Summary:
The discovery of gold in the early 1850s and subsequent Euro-American emigration devastated Indian societies. After brutal hostilities, soldiers relocated the region’s Native inhabitants to reservations in the northern part of the state. Poverty and disease took many lives and threatened to end traditional Indian cultures, but in the twentieth century, descendants of these peoples struggled from the edge of extinction to face a new era.