Congress's Oregon Donation Land Claim Act of 1850 contradicted promises in the 1787 Northwest Ordinance by encouraging emigrant settlement on Rogue Valley tribal lands before federal officials negotiated land cession in 1853. The act offered Americans up to 640 acres of free land for claims staked between 1850 and 1855, drawing settlers and miners into the valley, where prejudice, farming, fencing, mining, and the destruction of fisheries disrupted native lifeways and intensified conflict as both Indians and newcomers fought to protect their homes. After tensions mounted in southern Oregon, more than 100 white men attacked a camp of native women, children, and old men near the Table Rock Reservation at dawn on October 8, 1855, prompting some reservation Indians to seek protection at Fort Lane while others fled to the mountains, attacking and burning ranches along the way. George and Mary Harris, who had come from Missouri by way of the Oregon Trail and then the Applegate Trail, had settled near here in 1854 with their children Sophia and David, and on October 9 George Harris was shot as he tried to reach his cabin, Sophia was wounded, Mary defended the cabin for more than five hours, George died, David was never found, Frank A. Reed was killed, and 30 settlers were slain that day. The killing of George Harris and Mary's defense of the cabin were later used to demand the extermination of the remaining Rogue River tribes, and after President Franklin Pierce established a 1.1 million-acre reservation on the Oregon coast on November 9, 1855, western Oregon Indians were marched or shipped there as the Rogue River Wars ended in June and July 1856.
