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White American Violence on Tribal Peoples on the Oregon Coast

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White American Violence on Tribal Peoples on the Oregon Coast OHS Research Library, OrHi 9888 Library, OHS Research White American Violence on Tribal Peoples on the Oregon Coast OREGON VOICES by David G. Lewis and Thomas J. Connolly Traditional narratives of nineteenth-century western movement of White people across North America often present the West as an empty space waiting to be filled with an energetic, advancing vanguard of civilization. Arriving migrants were not filling an unoccupied demographic void; they IN 1851, Capt. William Tichenor claimed land in the territory of the Kwatami tunne, the Sixes River band of the Tututni peoples, which would become Port Orford, Oregon. On arrival, were displacing and replacing complex, settled societies that had resided Tichenor and hired men mounted a cannon on a large shore rock, later named Battle Rock, there for thousands of years. The newcomers self-defined their culture and that resulted in a standoff and many Native deaths. This 1856 sketch, published in Harper’s institutions as superior to those practiced by the Indigenous populations, Weekly, depicts a scene from the battle. asserting that this presumed superiority granted them a supreme right to govern and control this now-contested space. The resident populations were unconvinced and vigorously opposed Whites’ claims to supremacy. Ultimately, the coercive power of violence was the decisive factor in the about commerce. The Tualatin people ing witness to this violence is crucial to ascendency of Whites in the West. of the northern Willamette Valley (rela- understanding how those foundations tives of Santiam author David Lewis), of Oregon White supremacy looked and for example, traded with the Clackamas felt to Native people. DURING THE PAST five centuries, court upheld fundamental elements of Chinook for salmon at Willamette Falls, During the fur trade era, the Ore- Native peoples of the North American this doctrine in 1823.1 but were not permitted to fish with dip gon Country was primarily under the continent have lost nearly all of their Long before Europeans and Ameri- nets. One guilty of trespass or theft from influence of the British Hudson’s Bay landholdings to peoples of European cans brought new laws and customs a neighbor might face fatal retribution.2 Company (HBC). The company’s large descent. The acts required for taking to what would become Oregon, Native Settlers who began to arrive in the trapping parties effectively bypassed those lands rested on the denial that peoples of the valley and coastal late 1830s and into the decades that engaging with their Native hosts, from tribal people were humans, deserv- regions controlled access to their followed routinely ignored tribal laws whose lands they harvested furs and ing of human rights, and that violent natural resources on their lands through and policies. Over time, fur traders, game “without permission or apology.”3 actions were wrong when perpetrated property rights and access rules. Spe- settlers, miners, entrepreneurs, and Trappers disregarded traditional owner- on “savage” Indians. The relevant cific families often owned assets such military agents engaged in repeated ship protocols and, when challenged, body of law, commonly referred to as as fishing sites or managed gathering and often shocking acts of violence countered with a strategy of “massive the Doctrine of Discovery, is rooted in places, while hunting grounds might against Native people. Those acts of retaliation” or “generalized vengeance the Papal bull of 1493, which directed be shared with the broader community. physical injury, murder, and trauma pro- homicide.”4 The lesson that harming “barbarous nations be overthrown and Such rules contributed to their effective- vide insight into how White supremacy HBC employees could mean the death brought to the faith.” The U.S. Supreme ness as prolific traders who were savvy was institutionalized in Oregon. Bear- of multiple innocents firmly established 368 OHQ vol. 120, no. 4 © 2019 Oregon Historical Society Lewis and Connolly, White American Violence on Tribal Peoples on the Oregon Coast 369 Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-120022 subsequent relationships between Indi- relations” — was effectively the end of When Tichenor returned ans and Whites. From the Whites’ view, the Yaquina people as a nation.8 from San Francisco, he found those relationships enforced economic In 1851, an American schooner his men gone and signs of a and political superiority, but from the arrived at a remote natural coastal port great battle. He again went Natives’ perspective, the relationships in the territory of the Kwatami tunne, the south to San Francisco and established an enduring mistrust. Sixes River band of the Tututni peoples, returned on July 14 with One example, analyzed by scholar which would come to be known as some sixty-five men, who R. Scott Byram, illustrates this reality. Port Orford. American businessman he employed to establish a In 1832, Alsea hunters killed two HBC Capt. William Tichenor had the goal of firmly fortified beachhead and trappers who were in Alsea territory beginning a new American port town to claim Port Orford for his and trapping for furs without Alsea to service the gold fields of southern town. The men who escaped consent. The Chief Factor of the local Oregon, and he secured a donation battle eventually reached HBC outpost at Fort Vancouver, John land claim in the Kwatami lands without settlements in the north, and McLoughlin, instructed his employee, having first discussed his desires with on hearing their story, the Michel Laframboise, to lead a retaliatory the Tribe. Such claims were technically command at Fort Vancouver expedition. Laframboise was to deliver illegal under U.S. land law, as the Tribes sent a military detachment to the threat that, if the Indians would not had neither negotiated treaties nor sold punish the Tribes and to build identify and kill the perpetrators, the their land to the United States.9 a fort, Fort Orford, to ensure HBC “would come back and Kill every Tichenor had hired men from Port- the safety of the Americans one of the tribe that came in our way land and took on firearms at Astoria, in the region. More deaths and would not stop till we had killed and on arrival at his land claim, they followed, including many due every one of them.”5 The retaliatory mounted a ship’s cannon on top of a to punishments handed out DOROTHY LOPEZ WILLIAMS (TOLOWA) party attacked an innocent Yaquina large shore rock, called by the local by the military detachment on stands on a hillside looking out over the Pacific village, and, according to a narrative Athapaskan speakers Ma-na-xe oe neighboring Tribes. Tichenor, Ocean. Edward Curtis took this photograph in 1923. by Coquelle Thompson, “They shot and later renamed Battle Rock.10 They supported by the U.S. military, down man, woman, and child as they encountered stiff opposition from the created the first southern ran naked from the houses. Not one Kwatami people who occupied the coastal port on the Oregon coast, on River] country and slay the savages escaped. That is why only Yaqwina area, supplemented by a canoe arriv- unceded Kwatami lands, on Septem- wherever they can be found.”15 The [Yaquina] John and few others of the ing from the direction of Rogue River ber 14, 1851. It served as the center of Oregon City Oregon Spectator edi- Yaquina people survived. [The fur trap- and bringing the number of Indians colonization and Indian administration torialized on September 2, 1853, that: pers] killed many people in revenge for to “at least one hundred”.11 Tichenor’s for the southern Oregon coast for many The Indians are revengeful, though they two of a different tribe.”6 According to men responded to the Kwatami’s first years thereafter.14 seem bent upon plunder more than the HBC records, the party killed six Indians; attack with small arms fire and cannon Editorials in regional newspapers shedding of blood; but the whites are an account of the incident reported shots, killing twelve or thirteen Natives debated the treatment of Native peo- highly exasperated, and are determined, by Corporal Royal Bensell, however, with the cannon’s first firing.12 Follow- ple, with some regularly calling for the they say, to exterminate the race. claimed the “Sixes” (possibly Yaquina) ing the battle, “We counted seventeen extermination of the Tribes, who they A general disposition appears to “lost some 400 warriors.”7 Certainly, dead Indians,” according to an account referred to as if they were a scourge pervade the minds of the whites to kill all the Indians they come across. The both accounts exaggerate the real cir- by party leader J.M. Kirkpatrick, who on the region needing to be elimi- extinction of the entire race in that region cumstances to serve their own interests, later learned “from an Indian at the nated. An editorial in the Salem-based is the most unanimous sentiment. but as Byram emphasized, in the oral mouth of the Umpqua that there were Oregon Statesman, on July 8, 1851, for history of the Yaquina, this incident — “in twenty killed and fifteen wounded.”13 example, stated, “Permission has been These sentiments promoted the geno- initial, wide-scale breakdown of prin- After fourteen days of this standoff, asked, we learn, of the Governor [of cide of Native peoples. The rhetoric ciples of justice regarding international Tichenor’s men escaped north. Oregon], to march into their [Rogue was reinforced by the depredations 370 OHQ vol. 120, no. 4 Lewis and Connolly, White American Violence on Tribal Peoples on the Oregon Coast 371 laws and policies of California and Three men remained in the lodges tary at Port Orford.” The Justice of the People were gathered for Needash, Oregon, which allowed for the reim- and returned the fire with bows and Peace, however, soon released Miller, after the fall harvest, at the center of the arrows.
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