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In this article, Connor will explore the history of the Takelma people after the arrival of settlers in the Rogue Valley.
THE TAKELMA TRIBE
Written by Connor Upshaw
Long before European settlers arrived in North America, the Takelma tribe prospered in the Rogue Valley area. They had lived there for thousands of years, thriving off of the river and the sprawling woodlands. When gold was discovered in the valley during the 1840s, prospectors flocked to the region, hoping to make it big. This was when the Takelmas’ ancestral home was swept out from under them.
In 1829, The Hudson Bay Company was the first group of settlers to interact with the Takelmas, according to the National Park Service. Their goal was to establish a fur trade with the Native Americans; this effort was unsuccessful. They also discovered the Rogue Valley due to this interaction, which led to the finding of an even more valuable opportunity than the fur trade: gold. This discovery caused many European settlers to travel to the region, some by the Oregon Trail. Unfortunately for the Takelmas, this influx of foreigners would irreparably damage their tribe as they knew it.
Image of a Takelma tribesman. Taken from the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians website.
After encountering the settlers, the first impact on the Takelmas was the introduction of smallpox into their population. They had actually encountered influence from the Europeans before the 1830s, with the first smallpox outbreak in the 1780s. This was carried over the Columbia River and was not the result of direct contact, unlike the second outbreak in the late 1830s. The National Park Service clarifies that we are not certain of the exact death rate for the Takelmas. However, “estimates of smallpox mortality among other Native American populations were as high as 90 percent.” It is safe to say that the effect the epidemic had on the tribe was massive. Smallpox was not, however, the only of their problems.
Image from Weebly, "The Tribes of Oregon." The Takelmas believed that all things in nature are inhabited by spirits from the spiritual realm. They were "animists," believing that the human spirit is separate from the body. Their clothing often reflected these spiritual beliefs. According to BLM, animism is believed to be the oldest form of religion in the world.
The year 1851 was when the gold mining business really boomed in the Rogue River area. There had been some aggression between settlers and natives before this, though it had been limited to attacks on Oregon Trail settlers and livestock herders. Mainly due to the settlers' aggression and fast advancement into Takelma territory, full-out war would soon break out between the two groups. These incursions would come to be known as the “Rogue River Indian Wars.” The Takelma tribe was sorely outmatched; settler weaponry was far superior, and there were more of them. Between 1853 and 1854, the settlers and the natives signed “several treaties that ceded Tribal land,” according to the Bureau of Land Management. The Takelma Tribe was pushed back to the new Table Rock Reservation, having lost many people and vast swaths of territory to the invaders.
After being transferred to the reservation, the Takelma tribe would soon lose much of its identity. At first, they fought back, again threatening war with settlers. However, these efforts would be in vain. As the white invaders continued to plunder their ancestral lands, President Franklin Pierce had the Takelmas transferred to the Siletz or Coast Reservation, which was around 265 miles away from their homes. They were packed like sardines with other tribes and forced to travel by foot. One hundred armed guards transported them and, by the end of the trip, many natives had died. Even those that made it did not do so well; BLM notes that “change of diet and starvation, exposure to a different climate and disease rapidly weakened the survivors.” The Takelma tribe, being mixed with so many others, would soon be homogenized into the Confederated Tribes of Siletz. Others transported to the Grand Ronde Reservation would be known as the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.
Unlike the lives of the Native Americans, which were turned upside down, the situation was much better for the invaders who had remorselessly stolen their lands. Even so, the mining was not going as well as settlers had hoped, and the Rogue Valley had far less gold than they had thought. According to the National Park Service, many decided to stay instead of making the perilous journey across the continent. The Rogue Valley area would soon be home to a stagecoach stop during the 1860s, which would be called Grant’s Pass in honor of General Grant's victory at Vicksburg during the Civil War. The apostrophe would be removed, the stagecoach station would become a railhead and, finally, the Josephine County seat would become a town. The Takelma people were quickly forgotten.
Photo of Grants Pass in 1890, from the Grants Pass website.
It would take over a century before good news would reach the Takelmas. The 1970s were when the Confederated Siletz tribes started to reorganize, arising as a “larger, intertribal group” according to the National Park Service. Their first chief was a full-blooded Takelma named George Harney, and his granddaughter, Agnes Baker-Pilgrim, continued to educate the public on her people's history until her death in 2019. While she was alive, she was the oldest living full Takelma. Specifically, she published a book in 2015 titled, Grandma Says: Wake Up World. This book explores topics of oppression towards Native Americans, but also many contemporary issues that impact all of society. All of this is a beacon of hope for the Takelmas, and goes to show how much the situation is improving for Native Americans after centuries of oppression.
The American Revolution and the founding of the United States has long been considered a symbol of freedom and democracy. What many do not realize is that, through much of the history of the Republic, these ideals mainly applied to White men. Most other groups were subjugated and oppressed, as the story of the Native Americans proves. The Takelma Tribe was far from the only tribe to be exterminated by the European tide. According to an article from the University of Houston, there were an estimated 70-100 million natives in the Western Hemisphere as of 1492. By the turn of the twentieth century, this number had reduced to only 4-4.5 million. It was, in many ways, a genocide of terrifying scale that decimated an entire race of people. As learned in US History class, California gold rush towns had bounties for Native American scalps and ears, which could be exchanged for a couple of dollars. Even far into the 20th century, Native Americans and their children were forced onto reservations and boarding schools, which were often among the most unjust and impoverished areas in the nation. All of this was allowed in a country referred to as the land of the free.
The story of the Takelmas is a tragic one. It shows the destruction of an entire society, committed due to greed. Grants Pass as we know it today is built upon the ancestral lands of the Takelma people. Their culture, which had existed for thousands of years, had been upended in a few short decades. The tragedy of the Takelmas is a grim reminder of the past. Though civil rights for many Native Americans have been improving over the last century, that has not been the case for most of American history, even here in the Rogue Valley.
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