Reservation Plan (Continued)
Willamette Valley and Its environs were an Important source of furs and
supplies, particularly venison, for the fur traders along the Columbia.
Fur trading parties, first of the Northwest Fur Company, and after 1821, of
the Hudson's Bay Company, visited the region to trade and to trap, and to
use the valley as a route to the south. These men found the climate and
resources of the valley attractive. French Canadian employees and former
employees of the fur companies began to settle above the falls of the
Willamette. Soon there were small farms with herds of horses, cattle, and
sheep. Many of these men married Indian wives and established close ties
to Indian communities.
The relations between the early traders and the Indians was for the most
part friendly, although there was some conflict with groups on the
southern perimeters of the Willamette Valley. In 1818 a Northwest Company
party killed fourteen Indians In the Umpqua Valley and In 1828 eleven .
members of a Independent American fur trapping party were killed In an
altercation on the lower Umpqua. Whatever the reaction of Indians to
Incursions of newcomers In the Willamette Valley, they could muster little
resistance after severe epidemics of introduced diseases swept the region
between 1830 and 1832.
Fur traders were followed by missionaries and others. In 1834 Jason Lee
established a mission in the mid-Willamette Valley. In the following
years, more and more travellers were using the valley as a route between
California and the Northwest. By the 1840's there were settlements along
the lower Columbia and up the Willamette to the falls. After 1845, when
3,000 settlers entered Oregon, these newcomers began to establish
themselves In farming communities upstream In prime locations through the
Willamette Valley. Some Indians also began to farm.
The gold rush to California in 1849 temporarily slowed European settlement
In and development of the region. However, by the mld- 1850s, large
numbers of settlers entered the valley and taken claim to much of the
prime land. Prospectors working north from California searched for gold
In the peripheral mountain and hill country and entered the lands of
Indian groups that previously had been spared the heaviest pressures of
the contact period.
By the 1850s there was Increasing pressure to remove the Indians from
their ancestral lands. In 1850 the Federal government offered free land
to settlers who would open up farms in Oregon. Prior to the passage of
the Oregon Donation Land Act of September 27, 1850 (9 Stat. 496) there was
no legislation by which settlers could acquire title to their lands. The
Donation Land Act was passed by the Congress before treaties had been
negotiated providing for extinguishment of Indian title to the land.
There was growing conflict between Indians attempting to defend their