Tuning in to tribal histories

RAINBOW: “There wasn’t a major tribe that lived here but there were people who came through,” this may not have been what people had hoped to hear but it was David Lewis’s honest appraisal of Native peoples’ involvement with the McKenzie River Valley. Speaking at the Upper McKenzie Community Center earlier this month he went on to add that those interactions were most likely to have involved late summer visits for fishing or berry picking, rather than establishing any permanent villages in the area.

Lewis is a member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and a specialist in the history of Kalapuyans and other Western Oregon tribes which he’s been studying for more than twenty years. He also holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Oregon and is an Assistant Professor of anthropology and Indigenous studies at Oregon State University.

Initially focusing on Grand Ronde tribal histories, he’s extended his research to cover the tribal settlements and reservations in western Oregon.

Despite being a member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and a descendant of the Santiam, Takelma, and Chinook peoples, Lewis said he grew up not knowing a lot about “the interrelationships we all have in treaties, US Indian policies, and events of the time.”

Like most other people in the room listening to the lecture that night, he said his understanding of what occurred in the past came from “an alternative history of Native peoples in the Willamette Valley.”

Most of those accounts were written without Native people's input, he noted, adding that few native people were consulted, causing the early histories of native people to be completely ignored

In his book, “Tribal Histories of the Willamette Valley,” Lewis stresses the importance of the “alternative perspective” of Native people not normally recorded. Part of his goal in writing it, he said was to expose people to Native perspectives as much as possible “as they lost land, people, rights, and struggled through generations of mistreatment. But he also felt a need to counter to “normal” US histories that “have aggrandized the actions and intents of the settlers.”

“Interactions between tribes and settlers were not always a pretty story,” he said. But unlike other areas of the country, he’s found no evidence of Oregonians using infected blankets to spread smallpox.

“What we think is malaria was the major problem around 1830, probably in the bodies of traders that passed through the tropics,” he believes. While it does not spread from person to person, researchers have identified a Willamette area mosquito similar to those that may have picked up the parasite to spread the disease.

Many tribes disappeared as the native population declined by 95 to 97 percent. Where there “had been ten villages that were part of a tribe it was reduced to one,” he told listeners.

Survivors then grouped for safety and survival causing many tribes to disappear and others to appear for the first time.

“In time new confederations rose,” Lewis said. The changes created “A different structure in the whole region that was previously there.”

Unfortunately, anthropology hadn’t come into its own as a science until the 1890s. By then, tribes had already been on reservations for close to 40 years.

There are other records, like when the Southern US Exploring Corps of 1841 visited the Willamette Valley and found a landscape quite different from today. “All of part of the prairie to the west of us had been burnt,” George Emmoins reported. In addition, they found the area “contrasted with green patches of woods scattered with oaks.”

Lewis said other accounts describing natural landforms could be a model for the future.

“We need to understand more about the unique interplay between fire and water for the continuation and revitalization of salmon, native plants, and animal health,” he believes.

Large acreages of seasonal wetlands, swales, and several lakes have been severely impacted by settlers who used drain tiles and ditching to transform them into farmlands. With them went areas that previously supported foodstuffs like camas and wapato that had sustained native populations.

“There are unique tribal cultural adaptations to seasonal wetlands and swales that are yet to be fully considered,” Lewis said.

Some of that research is already underway, like on a test plot of 70 acres of private land where native plants have returned to regenerate on their own.

Others are looking at how fire might return as a management tool to reduce the incidence of large wildland fires.

On that last point, Lewis had a caution. “If we don’t bring back water, what’s going to happen?”

To view a video of the lecture, go to: tinyurl.com/bddhbnsa