Siletz news /, August 01, 2000, Page 26, Image 26

TRIBAL HISTORY
A Piece of Siletz History
by Robert Kentta, Cultural Resources Director
This is the 10th in a series of articles about our tribal history.
Each article focuses on a particular event or era of importance in
understanding our past. The last article was about the early days
of reservation life for our people. This article will explain some of
the events leading up to the first attempts at reducing our reservation.
Part X - Executive Order, Dec. 21,1865
Concentrating on one particular government action toward our
people and trying to adequately describe it is daunting. Part of the
problem is that these snippets of history do not stand alone in time
and context. All of these situations relate to each other, not only
because they are all part of the same story, but because many
times, patterns of involvement by the same people show up over
and over. Additionally, there are trends and eras of federal Indian
policy and other national and regional political and legislative
movement that indirectly (but ultimately directly) affect our people.
We also must not forget the power and influence that local
attitudes of the general populous can have and the determination
of some people when they are out to make a dollar. Just remember
that several things generally were going on in any governmental
action toward our people. This usually includes politicians fishing
for votes, federal economics, individual moneymaking schemes,
and other personal interests.
Having said all that, President Andrew Johnson’s signing of
the Dec. 21,1865, executive order was the result of several different
things that happened over the several years previous. All must be
weighed against the interpretation of the times regarding our legal
history, rights, etc.
A couple of articles ago, I discussed the establishment of the
Coast (Siletz) Reservation (its relationship to the treaties already
ratified, how the Senate had delegated the power of creating our
permanent reservation to the president - by specific language within
the treaties, etc.). Creating reservations and indeed the “reservation
system” as a policy was relatively new in the mid-1850s. Creating
reservations by executive order was a brand new concept (the
first done in the spring and ours in the fall of 1855).
I also have mentioned that Oregon’s non-lndian population at
that time was overwhelmingly in total and in some extreme elements
- violently - opposed to the creation of a permanent reservation in
Western Oregon. Permanently reserving nearly one-third of the
Oregon coast for exclusive Native use was absurd in many people’s
minds. (They quickly forgot that the 1855 Coast Treaty had not been
ratified, so they were technically squatting on the other two-thirds.)
I wonder how much that sentiment has died down after seeing
what we went through to get our scattered parcels returned in 1980.
By 1865, the history of how the Coast Reservation was created
and why already was muddled in many people’s minds. They
seemed to already be thinking that the executive order was a
temporary, emergency measure by the president, rather than a
directive by Congress through the ratification of several treaties.
Through the early and mid-1860s, several things were going
on - locally and nationally - that built up to the signing of the 1865
executive order. If you stop to think about it, this was a time of
intense trial and turmoil in the United States, testing the strength of
the less-than-100-year-old government.
The Civil War distracted most of the attention away from the
West and focused it on the Southeast. A large population of southern
sympathizers existed in Western Oregon. Forts Hoskins, Yamhill,
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and Umpqua, and the Blockhouses, were more worried about a
southern “uprising” most of the time than any serious worry about
us. At the end of the war, the forts were abandoned
Congress passed the Homestead Act -*.........................
........... right around the time that the executive order was signed,
bringing on a gold rush atmosphere nationally among those looking
for a good place to file a claim. Locally, a court case was brought
against our Siletz agent (Ben Simpson) by a schooner ship captain
who refused to quit coming onto the reservation to load native
oysters. Although the state Court decided in favor of the agent’s
action as a representative of the United States in 1864, it only
brought Yaquina Bay to many more people’s attention as a
potentially valuable harbor.
Agent Simpson would say or do one thing seemingly in favor
of protecting the reservation, then turn around and do something
that totally jeopardized it. He would be somebody to watch out for
over the next 10 to 15 years. He definitely had very divided loyalties.
The state Legislature also got involved, representing to
Congress and anyone in Washington, D.C., who would listen that
the Coast Reservation was too large and that valuable access to
the coast and a good harbor was being wasted. Let’s just say that
a good amount of conversation was going on about the subject.
In 1864, J.W.P. Huntington (superintendent of Indian Affairs)
wrote in the annual report that he had studied the matter and
concluded that the public good required that access to Yaquina Bay
from the Willamette Valley be granted.
Included in the same report is a letter to the secretary of the
Interior, signed H.D. Barnhart with no indication of what office he
held if any, that was printed immediately following Superintendent
Huntington’s report. In it, Barnhart said that the Indians on the
reservation did not need or use Yaquina Bay. He extolled the many
benefits of opening that area to settlement, trade, and commerce.
Nobody seemed to recognize that Yaquina and Alsea villages
still were occupied by their original people and that the Siletz agent
had encouraged Coquelle and Chetco families to live, farm, and
take advantage of the extensive fishery on the Yaquina. Agent
Simpson himself, probably fearing ostracism from good society and/
or feeling some of his natural internal conflict, had reported a couple
of times on the subject.
He spoke of the evil influences that develop by Indians
associating with a bad class of whites and the need to keep Indians
separated from whites to whatever extent was possible. He then
did an about face and talked about the opening of at least a town
site on Yaquina Bay as though it was a done deal, and said that a
“right of way” across the reservation should be made.
Nowhere during this process did any government agent bring
up the ratified treaties, but there was some discussion about the
rights of the Indians. Agent Simpson talked about it as though it
was a foreign land, except to say that the Indians living in the Siletz
Valley have the right to hunt and fish there. It is not clear how it was
decided that the president should take action instead of looking for
legislative approval from Congress. It simply may have been
assumed that it was within the presidential powers to reduce a
reservation created by the executive office.
The end result was that on Dec. 20, 1865, Secretary of the
Interior James Harlan wrote a draft to the president. "... It is
represented by the Oregon delegation in Congress that this
reservation is unnecessarily large ... They ask for a curtailment of
(See History on page 27)