A bit of an explanation, because I didn't film the entire article... Sorry! > > West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser. Friday 20th June, 1856. > > NEW YORK MIRROR - [Regrets, but only part of the article is available] > .....After picturing the infernal schemes and doings of the whites, and > the massacres of Indians, he sums up the bloody and shameful results, > and says:- "Such have been the results of one of the most unwise, > unnecessary, and extravagant expeditions ever fitted out by the United > States, and for no other reason than to plunder the treasury of the > United States, and to make political capital for somebody. It could > not have been projected for the defence of the inhabitants of Oregon, > nor the protection of Oregonians in Washington territory, for none > resided there. What then could have been the object? Nothing but a > crusade against the Indians, and a longing to enrich the country. If > such was not the object, Governor Curry, instead of sending his troops > against the Indians in Washington territory, and beyond his > jurisdiction, would have sent all of them to Southern Oregon, where the > war raged, and nowhere else in his territory. The Oregonians say that > the war 'is a godsend to the country.' Speaking of the conduct of the > territorial authorities in this matter, General Wool says:- "I regret > that I am compelled to say that such conduct is too much encouraged by > persons holding high offices under the Government of the United States; > and because I have opposed this inhuman and barbarous practice, and the > wholesale plundering of the treasury of the United States, which there > are no circumstances to justify, I have been denounced by the governors > of both territories and the Legislature of Oregon." General Wool > declares that the Oregon-Indian war, according to the programme of its > authors, will cost the United States from 50,000,000 dollars to > 100,000,000 dollars, and imprint on the national escutcheon an > indelible bloody infamy. Three-fifths, if not all our Indian wars, > have been infamous - tolerable nowhere in the sight of eternal justice. > It is evident that there is to be no cessation in the bloody game > until the last Indian is destroyed. Hounded from their homes by > boastful civilisation in the name of liberty, their bones whiten the > surface of a continent; and yet even while they crouch for shelter in > the gorges of the mountains, the cry of the white man is "Slay - slay > the Indian." Just to explain; the Indians living in the Northwestern Territories weren't accustomed to fighting, although some tribes tried; they were hunters/gatherers, who relied on the natural world for sustenance. Evidently, the term "Oregonian Indian Wars" has been applied to a series of confrontations, which resulted in the Indians losing everything. (Some through shameful "treaty" negotiations, which promised much but delivered nothing.) I should point out that the Governor of Minnesota at this time also made the statement "The only good Indian is a Dead Indian", as reported in the local newspaper. ................................................... In 1851- 1852, packers on the trail to California discovered the placer mines of southwestern Oregon. Within weeks a reckless population, most of them hardened miners from California, surged over the Siskiyous or stepped off the gangplanks of ships putting in at Crescent City, Port Orford, Umpqua City, or Scottsburg. The rush was on. It meant quick riches for those who found the right pothole in bedrock filled with nuggets or the fortunate miners whose riffle boxes captured the fine particles of gold that glistened in the black sand. For the Indians of the Rogue River country it meant that all they had known and their very lives were at stake. The causes of conflict erupted everywhere. The Donation Land Act became law in 1850. Years passed before treaties, negotiated in 1853 and 1854, were ratified. Some, such as those of Anson Dart or the Willamette Valley Treaty Commission of 1851, never gained Senate approval. In spite of the promises of superintendents of Indian affairs Dart and Palmer, the white people poured in. Dispossession ruled. The miners drove the Takelma, Shasta, Chetco, Shasta Costa, Mikonotunne, Tututni, Galice Creeks and Cow Creeks from their villages. Located on old stream terraces, the Indian homes were prime locations for placer deposits. The hungry newcomers hunted the game, decimating the deer and elk populations. The Territorial Legislature in 1854 prohibited sale of ammunition or guns to Indians, deepening their disadvantage. The miners and residents of Jacksonville, Canyonville, Kerbyville, and Gold Beach liked bacon and ham. They let hogs run wild, catching them in baited traps. The hogs ate the acorns, a primary subsistence food for the Indians. Some whites banded together in the mid-1850s as "exterminators" to kill Native Americans in southern Oregon. This included aggression against Takelma Indians camped near Lower Table Rock, shown above. (Oregon State Archives Photo No. jacD0042) Mining debris poured down the Illinois, Rogue, South Coquille and South Umpqua Rivers. The salmon runs diminished; the eels died. Crayfish, fresh water mussels and trout choked on the flood of mud. Starvation threatened. The claimants of Donation Lands fenced their fields with split-rail fences and built log cabins. They worked with a will to stop Indian field burning. The Indian women found it impossible to harvest tarweed seeds and the blackberries that formerly regenerated with the annual fires did not grow back. The settlers turned under the fields of camas lilies, and their cattle and horses grazed off the blue-flowering plants. The mining districts--whether in the Rogue River country or the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon--caused major ecological disruption. The rush for quick wealth through mineral exploitation unraveled nature's ways and long-established human subsistence activities. Then came the "exterminators"--unprincipled men who believed only dead Indians were good Indians. They formed volunteer companies and perpetrated massacres against the Chetco Indians in 1853, the Lower Coquille Indians in 1854, and in wanton aggression against Takelma Indians camped near the Table Rock Reservation in 1855. Frederick M. Smith, sub-Indian agent at Port Orford, in 1854 addressed the attacks on the Indians in his district. They were ravaged by hunger, dispossession of their villages, onset of new and fatal diseases, and overt murders. Reporting the massacre of the Lower Coquille Indians, he wrote: "Bold, brave, courageous men! to attack a friendly and defenceless tribe of Indians; to burn, roast, and shoot sixteen of their number, and all on suspicion that they were about to rise and drive from their country three hundred white men!" Smith's lament, the mourning cries of the Indian women, the death rituals of rubbing the hair with pitch, and the inexorable course of hunger, attack, and death precipitated the conflicts known as the Rogue River Wars. The troubles seethed between 1852 and 1856. Finally the U.S. Army had sufficient forces to mount a campaign in 1855-56 to destroy the Indians' ability to resist. Joel Palmer negotiated treaties in 1855 with Native Americans living in eastern Oregon. Learn more about Palmer. Vanquished by the combined operations of the Oregon Volunteers and Army regulars, the Indians of the Rogue and Umpqua Valleys and the southwestern Oregon coast were then removed to the Siletz and Grand Ronde reservations. Forced marches through winter snows or over the rocky headlands and through the sand dunes of coastal Oregon became trails of tears for hundreds driven to the distant reservations. Other survivors were herded aboard the Columbia, a sidewheel steamer, which removed them from Port Orford to the Columbia and lower Willamette River area. Then they had to walk the muddy trail to the reservations. The myth of independence was shattered by the actions of Oregon's frontier residents. For their "services rendered" in the conflicts of 1853, the volunteers billed the federal government for $107,287, and they were the primary cause of the hostilities. When the conflicts ended in 1856, they worked for years to gain settlement. Finally in 1890 Congress passed the Oregon Indian Depredation Claims Act. Aged pioneers filed affidavits to claim reimbursement for lost pillows, ricks of hay, rail fences, and beans and bacon during the conflicts of the 1850s. A dependent generation's elders once again tapped the federal treasury for support. - taken from The Oregon Blue Book website -