September 15, 1998
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THE REVIEW
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Most tribal members know that the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon consists of five separate tribes
whose members lived in the western part of the state. The five tribes that make up the Grand Qonde Confederation arc: Rogue River,
Kalapuya, Chasta, Umpqua, and Molalla. Each of these tribes were made up of many different "bands." (The Mary's River band of the
Kalapuya Tribe, for example.) Members have often expressed an interest in learning more about their specific tribe and its history.
how their ancestors lived,
depth articles on each of
IN THE BEGINNING ...
From a place near the summit of Mount Hood,
Coyote scattered the heart of Grizzly Bear whom
he had just willfully slain. To what would become
Molalla Country he threw the heart and said, "Now
the Molalla will be good hunters; they will be good
men, thinking and studying about hunting deer."
Grizzly's demise, and hence the birth of the
Molalla Nation came about when he met Coyote
who was on his way to "make the world," accord
ing to an old Molalla story. The Great Bear de
manded a fight but Coyote cunningly challenged
him to a red-hot rock swallowing contest instead.
But Coyote cleverly swallowed strawberries while
Grizzly gulped down hot stones that burst his heart.
After much thought Coyote skinned and cut up
Grizzly and while scattering his body to the winds
he foretold that the Molalla people "will think all
the time they are on the hunt. "
Much has transpired amongst this nation of good
men and thinking hunters since their emergence
from the land where Grizzly's heart was sown; to
a mid-19th century treaty with the U.S. govern
ment; and their relocation to a reservation in the
Grand Ronde Valley.
By the time Stephen Lambert Pasis Savage was
serving as Grand Ronde legislative representative
in 1876, the Northern, Upper or Valley Molallas,
as the band is intermittently called, had winter vil
lages from their legendary birthplace near Mount
Hood to present day Oregon City and just east of
Salem to the foot of Mount Jefferson.
During the warmer months, these mostly no
madic people left their mud, cedar and hemlock
bark homes to freely roam parts of the Willamette
Valley. Like their neighbors to the north, the Up
per Chinook, the Upper Molalla used dugout ca
noes and were also using horses by the early 1800s.
While the Northern band shared hunting grounds
and other similarities with northern bands of Kal
apuya (Calapooia), the Southern, Lower or Moun
tain Molalla lived east of present day Eugene and
Roseburg in what is now the Umpqua National
Forest. When combined with their early neigh
bors, the Cayuse Tribe, they were estimated at 500
in number, according to a 1780 census report.
Both the Molallas of the mountains and the val
ley also had strong ties with the Klamath peoples
who they regularly traded with and who it is said,
called them "People of the Serviceberry Tract."
Despite the distinction between the northern and
southern bands of the Molalla Nation and the scar
city of information on the latter, the general his
tory and culture are more similar than different,
says Grand Ronde Cultural Resource Specialist,
June Olson.
"The general difference was more regional than
and how they came to Grand Rondc. In this issue of
the tribes Part One: the
anything else," explains Olson. "All Native people
adapted to the region they were in. Molalla of the
mountain region adapted to hunting the larger game
of that area and those in the valley were more simi
lar to the Kalapuya people who primary diet was
roots and small game, common in the valley."
Whether hunting large or small game, the prow
ess of Molalla hunters, as foretold by Coyote, was
duly noted by Savage who was also an ardent Na
tive culturalist. In addition to mastery of the bow
and arrow, he details rope traps used by Molalla
hunters to catch deer in small passes along the trails.
Hunters also camouflaged themselves with dear
heads while stalking their prey and were renowned
amongst neighboring tribes for their use of skill
fully trained dogs for tracking and hunting.
Molalla expertise also extended to fishing salmon
and steelhead. The tribe developed a tradition both
of spear and basket fishing. The latter used 10-by-12
foot vine baskets suspended on poles to catch
fish under waterfalls as they were herded into the
baskets with brush fences or by throwing stones.
The Molalla emphasis on hunting skills was also
embodied in competitive target practice games such
as Kakalinpasa where the object was to hit a roll
ing wheel of maple bark and grass with an arrow.
Like a number of other traditional Molalla
games, Kakalinpasa involved betting with
stakes such as money, skins or slaves,
according to Savage.
THE ARRIVAL OF WHITE SETTLERS
By the mid-1800s the Molalla tradition of
hunting and fishing became seriously threat
ened by encroaching white settlers and it
would not be long before their very lifestyle
was under siege. As more pioneers pushed
westward, Native hunting grounds began
shrinking causing Indiansettler tensions to
mount in Molalla Country.
Dwindling Native resources combined with set
tler prejudice and fear of Indian retaliation fur
ther escalated the strain and in 1846 the peace be
tween the two communities was nearly lost. It was
preserved only by last minute negotiations.
But two years later inevitable violence broke out
near Abiqua Creek, in present day Silverton. Al
though falsely called a "war" by many non-Indian
historians, Native peoples have a different story to
tell.
"The real story," says Olson, "is that during that
same period - 1848, it was about six months after
a Cayuse attack on the Whitman Mission and the
settlers in the Willamette Valley were afraid there
would be an Indian uprising."
She says that when a horseback mailman hap
pened across Klamath travelers camping with their
Molalla hosts, he sounded the alert that the group
was preparing to attack.
Molalla Tribe.
But Olson says what pioneers thought was an army
of male warriors "was really a group of women,
Elders and children." She notes the mailman prob
ably thought he saw a band of Indian men because
Molalla men, women and children traditionally
wore deer-hide trousers.
(Savage's records also confirm that while Mola
lla women occasionally wore hide skirts, they most
often wore buckskin pants and shirts distinguished
only by the beads that might decorate the female
attire and the feathers that might be donned for
ceremony or by chiefs.)
Blinded by fear and ignorance, the settlers took
arms and attacked the group killing about 13 and
wounding one. Olson says the Elders, women and
children fled as the aggressors pursued them to
the Abiqua Creek.
Before dying a warrior's death, "one of the
women defended the group With a bow and
wounded a soldier in the shoulder," narrates
Olson. But when the attackers caught up with the
band at the river, she says "they realized what they
had done and were so ashamed that they rode
off leaving the women to care for
the wounded."
Molalla Kate
dressed in full regalia.
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Olson offers an interesting addendum to this so
called war. She says the Daughters of the Ameri
can Revolution, a group that commemorates pio
neer patriotism with on-site monuments, honored
the alleged "battleground" with a plague on a stone
marker. The farmer who owns the land says that
after the stone was rolled into the creek a number
of times by vandals, it seemed pointless to return
its place on the bank. Olson says, "In my opinion,
it was not vandals at all, but the spirit of the woman
warrior who continuously pushed the stone into
the water. Eventually the plaque was removed from
the stone and the rock was left to rest in the creek
bed. The plaque is housed in Silverton's museum
and hopefully the spirit of the woman warrior is at
peace.
STRIKING AN AGREEMENT
WITH THE U.S. GOVERNMENT
On May 6 and 7, 1851 Indian Affairs (IA) Su
perintendent, Anson Dart, secured treaties with the
Northern Molallas (10 Stat. 1143, ratified March
3, 1855) at Champoeg, Oregon as part of a U.S.
campaign to acquire the entire Willamette Valley.
The original intent was to relocate all Native tribes
east of the Cascade Mountains but Molalla peoples,
like many other Western Oregon nations, refused
to move so far from their traditional homelands.
The treaty shows that Chiefs Quai-eck-ete, Yal
ukus (Yelkis) and Crooked Finger signed on be
half of the 58-member Molalla River band and
Chief Coast-no signed for the 65 members of the
Santiam River. These were two of six treaties
signed at Champoeg that comprise 19 pacts initi
ated by the U.S. government with Willamette Val
ley Tribes that year. Four years and a new IA
superintendent later, Congress finally acknowl
edged the agreements.
However, Congress was quick to recognize and
spur-on white settler land-grabs by passing and up
holding the 1805 Northwest Donation Land Act.
The act doled-out 'free' acreage to westward
bound pioneers decades before formal treaties were
signed with the aboriginal inhabitants. A policy
that Olson says heightened tensions between Indi
ans and their new non-Indian neighbors.
These tensions prompted the new immigrant gov
ernment to create more legislation that favored
settler fears over the aboriginal rights of Wil
lamette Valley Tribes. In 1854 the Oregon Ter
ritorial Legislature enacted a ban on the sale of
firearms to Indians thwarting the capacity of
the Molalla and other Tribes to hunt competi
tively with their new neighbors for scarce game
on rapidly shrinking hunting grounds.
The following year an 1855 Oregon proclama
tion sought to confine Willamette Valley Indians to
temporary reservations, charging them to account
for their whereabouts at all times or be imprisoned.
five-part series of in
By November
of that same
year diminishing
resources and
mounting con
flicts helped IA
Superintendent,
Joel Palmer,
persuade South
ern Molalla
tribal leaders to
move to the
Umpqua Reser
vation where
treaty negotia
tions began.
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"War
One month later a treaty endorsed by Chiefs
Steencoggy, Lattchie, Duggins and Counisnase (12
Stat. 981, ratified March 8, 1859) ceded Moun
tain Molalla lands to the United States and the band
of about 30 Molallas agreed to relocate, along with
the Kalapuya and Upper Umpqua Tribes, to the
Grand Ronde Valley.
Some Molalla Indians, unhappy with their new
life on the reservation, tried to return to their tra
ditional lands near the Molalla River only to find
the landscape so changed by the fences and ploughs
of white farmers that they could no longer call it
home.
On April 3, 1950 the Court of Claims awarded
the Southern Molallas $34,996.85 for reservation
lands the 1855 treaty mandated they would share
with the Umpqua. The amount was awarded, but
the Molallas only lived there for two months be
fore being removed to Grand Ronde.
MOLALLA COUNTRY TODAY
Despite a May 1955 federal register showing that
141 of the 882 members then enrolled in the Con
federated Tribes of Grand Ronde were of Molalla
decent, by the middle of this century non-Indian
sources began proclaiming the near extinction of
many smaller tribes and the Molalla were no excep
tion. It was not uncommon for photos such as one
of Fred Yelkis, nephew of famed Molalla Kate and
grandson of treaty signing Chief Yelkis, to appear
in newspapers like the July 1957 Portland Journal
captioned as one of 'the last Oregon Tribesmen.'
But despite the lack of complete data on the Mo
lalla people in non-Indian sources, Grand Ronde
community members such as Esther LaBonte
(b.1895 d. 1987); great nieces of Molalla Kate
Culture Board member, Marie Schmidt and Coun
cil Chair, Kathryn Harrison; and many others tes
tify to some of the countless Molalla links in In
dian Country.
Harrison's rich memories of her great-aunt in
clude Molalla Kate's remarkable proficiency in
making baskets, stringing bead necklaces and bak-
n
6
1
Top: The Daughters off the American
Revolution mounted this plaque near
the site off the Battle off the Abiqua.
Now it is on display at the Silverton
museum.
Bottom: A recent photo off Abiqua
Creek.
ing bread in spite of her near blindness in old
age. But what Harrison says she remembers most
about her name sake was how she made her feel as
a young girl.
"She was so interested in us kids. When we
would visit her, we used to have to line up so she
could feel our faces because she couldn't see us,"
recalls Harrison. "She always made us feel kind
of special. It gives you a lot of self-confidence."
In addition to living links to Molalla history and
tradition in Grand Ronde and throughout the North
west, there are also a number of historical points
of interest. Some of these include the McLaughlin
Museum in Oregon City which houses a few items
crafted by Molalla Kate; the site of the Abiqua
Massacre on the banks of Silverton's Abiqua Creek;
and cultural artifacts that may some day soon be
displayed at the planned Grand Ronde Cultural
CenterMuseum.
As members of the Confederated Tribes of the
Grand Ronde Community of Oregon, the Molalla,
'a nation of good hunters,' has taken part in
today's successful hunt for tribal survival, resto
ration and resources.
They continue to use their hunting prowess to
secure a better tomorrow for the children of Grand
Ronde and of all Native America. Because, as
Coyote declared, they "will think all the time they
are on the hunt."
Historical data and resources used in this article
were generously provided by the Grand Ronde
Cultural Protection office and the board of the
Kwelth Tahlkie Culture and Heritage Society.