The Coast (Siletz) Reservation
By Robert Kentta, Cultural Resources
Director
Amazingly enough, we are now in
discussions with the Grand Ronde Tribal
Council - after more than a year of them
refusing to meet with us - and what do
they want to discuss? Whether there was
a Siletz Reservation at all before 1875
(the time of the second action aimed at
reducing our reservation).
A number of years ago at a joint
Tribal Council meeting, our Tribe laid
out our historical research, proving our
connections to our treaties, how our
original reservation was created and why,
its boundaries, etc. It was an attempt to
educate them on our factual findings so
they would be aware of them and to dispel
any misinterpretations of our history.
Some of their group sat there quietly
and at least one acted shocked at the dif
ference in size between our respective
original reservations, saying, “Geez,
theirs was so big and ours so small.”
Generally, though, they responded
quietly and thanked us for the informa
tion. Not long after, a letter was sent to us
with Cheryle A. Kennedy’s signature stat
ing that “they would vigorously defend
their history.” We never were able to get
a definition of what that meant, but now
we have some inkling.
In a recent meeting between the Siletz
Tribal Council and theirs, they were asked
to defend maps purporting to describe the
original Coast Reservation boundaries
they had generated and published. The
maps are not based upon any recognized
sources or facts.
They were absolutely unable to
defend them and pretty much ended up
quoting from the 1855 Executive Order
and other documents that confirm what we
have always stated the boundaries to be,
while relying on vague statements in cor
respondence, referring to the approximate
average width of the original reservation.
They were supplied with concise reci
tations of historical facts directly refuting
their position, but they ended the meeting
by stating they didn’t believe either side
had convinced the other of anything, the
subject is complicated and difficult to
understand, they needed another meeting
to discuss it further - and needed time to
prepare their position paper. We said we
are ready anytime.
These issues and their position began
with surreptitious, lightly threatening (and
generally incorrect) statements in their
newspaper articles, on their historical
interpretive material and on things like
the before-mentioned production and
publishing of maps.
But this has been escalating and the
rhetoric elevating to the point of, at the
recent meeting, an overt (but weak and fac
tually bankrupt) attempt to bring our sover
eign right to our original reservation history
into question (see Grand Ronde amicus brief
in support of the State of Oregon’s position
regarding our appeal of the Grand Ronde
ceremonial hunt rule, articles in the Grand
Ronde newspaper Smoke Signals in 2009
and 2010, and more recently the Winter
2010-2011 issue of Oregon Historical
Quarterly in which David Lewis of Grand
4
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Siletz News
•
Courtesy photos from Brady Smith
The Coast (Siletz) Reservation (above) and the Grand Ronde Reservation (below)
Ronde and I were asked to submit dueling
articles on the subject).
This article is an effort to bring this
update to our membership and encourage
each of you to read all you can on the
subject, especially Charles Wilkinson’s
history of our people, and be prepared to
assist in the defense of our homelands,
original Siletz Reservation, our Tribal
sovereignty and our people’s rights as
Siletz Indians.
Read the material and you will see
who is relying on facts and reasonable
representation of them. Ours is clearly
the reasonable and logical version of
history, supportable by solid facts from
primary sources.
The treaties signed by our ancestors
in 1853-1855 set out the process for our
reservation to be established by presiden
tial order (aka an Executive Order).
March 2011
The seven ratified treaties of the Rogue
Valley, mid-Rogue region, Umpqua Val
ley and Willamette Valley (six that ceded
lands and one a supplementary treaty,
gaining consent of the Tribes already
on the Table Rock Temporary Reserva
tion to have the mid-Rogue and others
confederated with them) stated that the
Tribes signing the treaty agreed to cede
all of their lands described in the treaty
and established a temporary reservation
within the ceded area (or right to remain
within the ceded lands generally) until a
permanent reservation was established.
Federal policy regarding Tribes in the
west was still formulating and the deci
sion was made to continue the policy in
Oregon that already had been approved
for California (which never was fully
implemented and resulted in disaster and
the “ranchería system” for survivors) of
confederating the many Tribes and bands
of Western Oregon upon one reservation
instead of allowing the many Tribes and
bands to maintain many separate and
individual Tribal reservations.
In April 1855, Superintendent of
Indian Affairs for Oregon Joel Palmer
sent his recommendation to establish
the Coast (Siletz) Reservation. His maps
were separated from his letter during the
ocean voyage to Washington, D.C., and
wpre lost for months. When they were
reunited at the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs office in Washington, a flurry of
correspondence ensued that resulted in
President Franklin Pierce signing our
reservation into existence on Nov. 9,
1855. This included approximately 1.1
million acres of Tribal homeland, almost
one-third of the Oregon Coast, more than
100 miles long from north to south.
The kink in the plan came when it
became obvious it was going to be dif
ficult to deliver enough supplies to feed,
clothe and otherwise provide basic neces
sities for the approximately 5,000 Western
Oregon Indians slated to occupy the Coast
(Siletz) Reservation.
Palmer’s solution was to purchase
some Donation Land Claims from early
settlers in the south fork of the Yamhill
watershed and use that area as a staging
ground (encampment) for the Tribes being
removed to the new reservation. The plan
was revised into a recommendation to
have the encampment added to the reser
vation just established (our reservation),
but when the matter was fully consid
ered, another reservation - separate but
adjacent and sharing a boundary - was
established by Order of President James
Buchanan on June 30, 1857.
The order stated this was to be con
sidered primarily in fulfillment of the
Willamette Treaty, which also makes the
distinction that the Grand Ronde was being
established as “a” reservation for specific
Tribes - rather than an extension of our
reservation, the Coast (Siletz) Reservation.
Subsequently, our reservation had
parts opened to settlement (1865 ca.
200,000 acres - severing the reservation
into two parts - and 1875, approximately
700,000 acres, taking the remaining
southern portion and the northern half of
the northern portion). During all of that
time, the Indian Department was adamant
that the Grand Ronde agent’s jurisdiction
did not extend to the coast.
One of the most direct examples of
this were the responses to a complaint
by the Siletz agent that the Grand Ronde
agent was attempting to interfere in the
affairs on the north end of the Siletz
(Coast) Reservation. The acting com
missioner of Indian Affairs wrote to both
agents that the 1857 Executive Order
established the Grand Ronde agent’s
jurisdiction - and needed to be adhered
to - and the Grand Ronde agent’s author
ity ended at the western boundary of the
8th range of townships west of the Wil
lamette Meridian.
See Siletz Reservation
on next page.