We Greet Settlement ... ... With Reservations

For thousands of years Native people lived on this land and depended on its bounty until white settlers arrived seeking trade, land, and resources. A westward invasion in the mid-1800s brought wagon trains of settlers into their homelands, creating a dangerous and difficult time. In treaty negotiations in the early 1850s, Native people tried to reserve land within their traditional homelands, but as land-taking continued they ceded most of their lands and were moved to the Grand Ronde Reservation. There, various tribes and bands were brought together after treaties extinguished aboriginal title to their homeland, and in 1856 they became a group of camps beginning a struggle to survive as farmers, gatherers, and laborers while trying to maintain their tribal identities under foreign rule. Chief Sam said that before removal his people were promised cattle, horses, clothing, and land to cultivate, but that the government did not comply with those promises. Over the years, the reservation dwindled from 64,000-plus acres to 5 acres, a tribal cemetery, in 1954, and a slow process of reacquiring some of the original lands began in 1983.

Fort Hill, Oregon · United States