John Day Fossil Beds Historic Resources Study

Chapter Four:
SETTLEMENT (continued)

Disposition of the Land

Throughout the period of the land-based fur trade between 1811 and the mid-1840s, amicable relations had generally prevailed between the native inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest, and the Euro-Americans and Pacific Islanders who worked in that enterprise. When conflicts erupted they were resolved efficiently and without spread of tensions (McArthur 1974: 563-564). The era of overland emigration which commenced in 1843 was a different story. The potentials for conflict mounted steadily and were of discernible causes.

The pioneer generation included thousands of rough, uncouth people who, along with their parents and grandparents, had lived on the expanding western frontiers of the United States. Many carried a deep-seated distrust, if not hatred of Indians. This had been nourished by family lore as well as the publication of over 300 "captivity narratives." A lurid, sub-literary genre of autobiographical and biographical accounts by those who had escaped from the clutches of ''savages, " these works created and helped perpetuate a negative image of and attitude toward native peoples (Berkhofer 1988: 534-537; Kestler 1990: xvii-xxxv). Although actual conflicts between Indians and emigrants along the Oregon Trail were few, many distrusted Indians, blamed them for losses of livestock, and considered killing these people an acceptable practice (Farragher 1979: 31-32).

Federal policy failed to respond adequately to the unfolding invasion of Indian lands in the 1840s. Although the United States secured sovereignty in the Pacific Northwest in 1846, Congress took no action to organize a territory and establish courts, military posts, or the activities of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Instead, congressmen like Lewis Linn and Thomas Hart Benton introduced bills promising grants of large acreages of free land to those who would emigrate to Oregon. When this legislation — the Oregon Donation Land Act of 1850 (9 Stat. 496, amended by 10 Stat. 158 (1853)) — finally passed, the federal government had taken no action to secure cession of any Indian lands by treaty (Buan and Lewis 1991: 39-41).

The U.S. Army had, however, dispatched the Mounted Riflemen overland in 1849. These companies of dragoons established Cantonment Hall in eastern Idaho, occupied old Fort George, the fur trade post at Astoria, and laid out a garrison overlooking the former Hudson's Bay Company headquarters at Fort Vancouver in Washington. Their assignment was to guard the Oregon Trail and protect new settlements (Settle 1940: 265-272).

Other precipitating factors in the eruption of troubles were the parthenogenic consequences of a new population into that of people isolated from powerful, fatal diseases. While smallpox had broken out in the Columbia estuary in the 1790s, it had not killed a significant number. The impact of new diseases, however, unfolded with fury in 1831 and, over the next decade, decimated the Indians of the Columbia estuary and Willamette Valley. Probably as many as eighty percent died and many who remained were ill. Overland emigrants introduced measles and other maladies to the Cayuse, Walla Walla, Umatilla and Nez Perce in the years 1843-47. The Oregon Trail bisected their lands (Boyd 1990: 137-143).

A number of the sick emigrants found succor and restoration of health under the care of Dr. Marcus Whitman. The Indians did not. They died in increasing number (Boyd 1990: 137-143). Some of the Cayuse were convinced that Whitman was an evil doctor or, at best, a failed doctor. In Indian society a healer who failed to cure was liable for malpractice and the penalty was death. On November 29, 1847, a Cayuse party attacked the Whitman Mission. They murdered Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and a dozen others. The survivors fled to the Willamette Valley (Thompson 1969: 92-103).

The incident at Waiilatpu confirmed the worst fears of settlers in the Willamette Valley. Many were convinced that an Indian uprising was underway and that thousands of warriors would fall upon their isolated farms and small villages. The event brought an end to Protestant missionary efforts to the Indians on the Columbia Plateau for nearly twenty years, but it precipitated a new, armed invasion. Within days of receipt of news of the deaths at the Whitman Mission, companies of volunteer soldiers raised by the Oregon Provisional Government set out to teach the Cayuse a lesson. Thus unfolded in 1847-48 the Cayuse War. Hundreds of troops, rag-tailed, untrained, and determined to get back at the "savages" poured through the Columbia Gorge to punish the alleged murderers. Their campaigns proved frustrating; the enemy was elusive (Victor 1894: 194-263). Finally to get them to leave, the Cayuse leaders surrendered five men believed to have been involved in the attack at Waiilatpu. These men were tried and hanged in 1850 in Oregon City (Lansing 1993).

The Cayuse War shocked Congress into action. On August 14, 1848, it passed the Organic Act (9 Stat. 323) to create Oregon Territory. This legislation set the stage, at last, for the unfolding of federal Indian policy throughout the region. It extended the Ordinance of 1787 to all of the Pacific Northwest. The "utmost good faith" clause in that ordinance affirmed aboriginal land title. This meant the federal government would mount a treaty program and reduce Indian lands as provided by the Constitution while, at the same time, defining its relationships with the tribes and identifying their reserved lands, rights, and access to social, medical, and educational programs. Joseph Lane, a resident of Indiana and a military hero from the Mexican War, arrived in the region in March, 1849, to proclaim the creation of Oregon Territory, to assume his responsibilities as governor, and to act, as well, as ex-officio superintendent of Indian Affairs. Lane initiated the first collection of information about the numbers, locations, leaders, and lifeways of the region's native population (ARCIA 1850: 125-135).

The efforts to deal with the Indians faltered. Congress passed a law on June 5,1850, (9 Stat. 437) to create the Willamette Valley Treaty Commission and to extend the Indian Trade and Intercourse Act of 1834 to Oregon Territory. Although the Commission ultimately negotiated six treaties in councils, Congress abrogated its powers and the Senate never considered the agreements. The Trade and Intercourse Act provisions, however, were significant: they prohibited the sale of liquor to Indians, set standards for trade relations, and officially declared that all Indians lands, until ceded by ratified treaty, were "Indian Country." In "Indian Country" tribal law and custom prevailed (Strickland and Wilkinson 1982: 27).

Not until June of 1855, did the respective superintendents of Indian Affairs in Oregon and Washington initiate treaty discussions with the natives of the Columbia Plateau. Driven by the Pacific Railroad Surveys and the prospect of securing a right-of-way for a line from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Puget Sound or the Columbia estuary, Governor Isaac I. Stevens of Washington Territory and Joel Palmer, Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Oregon Territory, assembled several thousand Indians at the great Walla Walla Treaty Council. In a succession of days of presentation, discussion, and persuasion, the negotiators secured treaties with the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Cayuse, Walla Walla, and Yakama. The agreements reserved large tracts of the aboriginal lands to the tribes.

Separately, on June 25, 1855, in a council at The Dalles, Palmer negotiated a treaty with the Warm Springs tribes. The agreement ceded lands throughout much of the Deschutes and John Day drainages but created a reservation of over 600,000 acres. Significantly, all of these treaties reserved hunting, gathering, grazing, and fishing rights for the tribes. Thus, dispossessed of large areas of their lands — including the John Day country — the tribes retained opportunities for basic subsistence activities they had exercised from time immemorial (Beckham 1998: 154-155).

The Indians of the John Day watershed in the latter part of the 1850s were expected by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to locate within the newly designated reservations. To the east, the Umatilla Reservation lay along and into the Blue Mountains in a region bisected by the Umatilla River. To the west was the Warm Springs Reservation which lay along the west bank of the Deschutes. It included the lower Metolius River, the Warm Springs River, and ran west to the summit of the Cascade Range. It is likely that most of the Sahaptin-speaking peoples who had lived in the John Day watershed eventually relocated on the Warm Springs Reservation. There was a greater prospect of kinship and language affinity than with the Cayuse, Walla Walla, and Nez Perce on the Umatilla Reservation (Hunn and French 1998: 389-391; Stern 1998: 414-416).

The treaty situation of the Northern Paiute remained unresolved for another nine years. On October 14, 1864, as cattle grazers were moving into the lush meadowlands of the lakes and rivers east of the Cascades, J. W. Perit Huntington, Oregon Superintendent of Indian Affairs, negotiated a treaty with the Klamath, Modoc, and the "Yahuskin Band of Snakes." This last group were Northern Paiutes whose homeland included Sycan Marsh and parts of the upper Deschutes watershed. On August 12, 1865, the United States in council at Sprague River in south-central Oregon secured a treaty with the Walpapi band of Northern Paiute under Chief Paulina. It is probable that signatories to this treaty included people who had regularly fished and lived in the upper John Day country. Their treaty ceded lands at Snow Peak in the Blue Mountains, "near the heads of the Grande Ronde River and north fork of John Day's River; then down said north fork of John Day's River to its junction with the south fork; thence due south to Crooked River . . . " and on to Harney Lake and east into the Malheur watershed (Kappler 1904[2]: 876; ARCIA 1866: 5-6).

In this same period the Oregon Superintendent of Indian Affairs returned to the tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation and on November 15, 1865, secured a second treaty ceding their off-reservation fishing rights. The tribes immediately claimed the treaty was fraudulent and that they had no intention of surrendering these life-sustaining fisheries along the Columbia River. The arguments persisted for the next twenty-three years before the federal government acquiesced and henceforth ignored the 1865 agreement (Beckham 1984a: 110-113).

When the treaties of 1855 were under consideration by the Buchanan administration and the Senate, hostilities erupted on the Columbia Plateau. Generally known as the Yakima War of 1857-58, this conflict was the consequence of the western Plateau tribes sensing the same realities which had impinged upon the Cayuse in 1847: deaths, dislocations, losses of lands, and a mounting tide of Euro-American emigration. The U.S. Army was a central player in the conflicts. It had established Camp Drum, subsequently known as Fort Dalles, in 1850, at the eastern end of the Columbia Gorge on the Oregon Trail (Knuth 1966: 297). In 1855 it erected Fort Cascades at the lowest rapids on the Columbia in the western Gorge and stationed troops in nearby strategic blockhouses — Fort Raines and Fort Lugenbeel at the Middle and Upper Cascades (Beckham 1984b).

The conflicts of 1856-57 occurred in the Columbia River Gorge and in Washington Territory north of the river. As in so much of the early historic period in the Pacific Northwest, the John Day country remained "out back of beyond." It was neither a field of conflict nor of Army, volunteer, or Indian military movement. The Indians of the John Day watershed, as of August 1857, remained in their homeland. A. P. Denison, Agent for Northeast Oregon, wrote:

The John Day Rivers occupy the country in the immediate vicinity of the river bearing that name. Throughout the late war they were with the hostile party; since then they have been friendly and well disposed. They will require but little assistance from the department the present year. The resources of their country are such as to preclude the probability they will require much aid hereafter (ARCIA 1858: 373).

The Bureau of Indian Affairs estimated the population of the Indians of the John Day River as 120 people in 1859. Their leader was known as "House" (ARCIA 1859: 435).

The late 1850s were nonetheless a time of tension for the John Day people in their homeland, as well as for the Wasco, Warm Springs, and other bands who had removed to the Warm Springs Reservation. The Northern Paiute looked jealously at the resources of those tribes. Under the annuities provided by their treaty, the government had purchased clothing, tools, and livestock for them. These assets proved irresistible. The Northern Paiute, as had been their practices for several decades, launched a new series of raids northward. Their goals, in this instance, were plunder and women. The reports of the Indian agents at Warm Springs chronicled the problems which beset the people held there (ARCIA 1859: 801-802). Illustrative were the comments of Agent G. H. Abbott of July, 1860:

When I took charge of this reserve I found the Indians in great fear of their mortal enemies, the Snakes, and during the early spring they were greatly distressed by the depredatory incursions of those unconscionable thieves. It was necessary to herd all stock during the day and corral it at night, and to observe the greatest vigilance at all times (ARCIA 1860: 442).

In time, the Northern Paiute incursions abated. A number settled on the reservation and, eventually became one of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Indians (Wasco, Wishram, Warm Springs [or Tenino], and Northern Paiute).