8
S moke S ignals
MARCH 15, 2016
Beckham is author of many books
TRAIL continued
from front page
Beckham’s new article details the
removal of the Umpqua people in
January 1856 before the removal
of the Rogue Valley people from
Table Rock the next month. The
diary account of Agent George
Ambrose recounts the Rogue Indian
removal to Grand Ronde and it is
Beckham’s presentation of Special
Agent Robert Baylor Metcalfe’s di-
ary account of the Umpqua people
that now adds depth to the time of
Indian removals.
What set Metcalfe’s diary account
apart are the additional details
provided by Special Sub-Agent
Theophilus Macgruder’s inventory
of Indian belongings.
“This information always existed,
it’s just that before Dr. Beckham’s
work it was not available in this
format,” says Tribal Historic Pres-
ervation Office Manager David
Harrelson.
Beckham is one of the foremost
historians on Native American
history in Oregon. He lives in Lake
Oswego.
Beckham, who is the Dr. Robert
B. Pamplin Jr. Professor of Histo-
ry at Lewis and Clark College in
Portland, just authored an article
about the removal of the Umpqua
Valley Indians to Grand Ronde. The
article, titled “The Trail of Tears of
the Indians of the Umpqua Valley,
1856,” will appear in the March
edition of “The Umpqua Trapper,”
the quarterly publication of the
Douglas County Historical Society.
“The Umpqua Trapper” has been
in publication continuously since
1965.
Beckham is best known for au-
thoring books like “Requiem for a
People: The Rogue Indians and the
Frontiersman,” “Oregon Indians:
Voices from Two Centuries” and
“Many Faces: An Anthology of Or-
egon Autobiography.”
“Requiem for a People,” which
was published in 1971, is consid-
ered the only complete record of
the region’s Native Americans and
it chronicles the loss of Native life-
styles in the 1850s.
While this time of year marks
a time when Tribal members are
remembering the suffering and
displacement of their ancestors,
Beckham’s research is providing
new information on the subject.
According to Beckham’s arti-
cle, Superintendent Joel Palmer
planned to colonize the Umpqua
and Rogue River Valley Indians,
taken from their homelands, to
become farmers in Grand Ronde.
Beckham says Palmer thought
there was only one way to bring
peace to the area and that was by
separating Native peoples from
Euro-Americans.
Beckham’s article provides de-
tails like diary accounts from Met-
calfe, inventory lists of the personal
belongings of the Indian people who
were rounded up by the cavalry for
the walk to Grand Ronde and the
dollar amounts of that inventory.
Beckham’s article also includes
information about Macgruder,
who provided an assessment of
This map traces the “Trail of Tears” of the Umpqua Tribal people that
occurred in January 1856.
the value of the personal items left
behind by the Natives. Macgruder
routinely valued items like canoes
at $2 to $3 each, tents for $5 and
axes for a $1.
Beckham points out that al-
though stark and somewhat cold,
the assessments and diary accounts
prove that the Natives were not a
warring people at the time of forced
relocations. They owned farms
and grew crops, and they owned
canoes, horses, rifles, axes, kettles
and beads.
“To me the most interesting thing
about this is the people take on
an identity in that the Macgruder
account they have names, they
have property, they were already
engaged in subsistence agriculture,
they were producing grain and hay
and they owned beads and dentali-
um shells and canoes and muskets
and axes and kettles,” says Beck-
ham. “And all of that; all of those
personal items were simply just left
behind. They were forced to leave in
such a hurry with only six wagons
to move all those people including
pregnant women, little children
and the aged.
“It was an ill-conceived, poorly
funded removal – just like the
one Ambrose did from the Rogue
Valley.”
An excerpt from Metcalfe’s diary
reads business-like at best:
“Wednesday 23rd – Rained
through the day, road very bad.
Moved four (4) miles. Met an ex-
press from Supt. Office with funds.
“Thursday 24th – An Indian child
died during the march and a wom-
an of the Umpqua Band died after
we arrived in camp. Moved eight
(8) miles.
“Friday 25th – I found it neces-
sary to hire another wagon and
team as our marches were getting
much shorter and many of the Old
and infirm were very late getting
into camp. Moved about six (6)
miles. Encamped near Corvallis.”
“This removal was mostly
Umpqua Calapooyia with about
40 Molalla and they picked up addi-
tional Willamette Valley Calapooy-
ians along the way,” says Beckham.
“The exodus of the Indians of the
Umpqua Valley was so hurried
that most were forced to leave their
possessions and walk to the reser-
vation with only the clothes on their
backs and what they could carry.”
Beckham says that Palmer then
ordered Macgruder to tour the
former Indian settlements of the
Umpqua to tally individual proper-
ty losses. Macgruder had to cover
a lot of ground to inventory the
belongings of so many people.
Macgruder “was out at Looking
Glass, he was down at Winston, he
was at Roseburg, he was up at Deer
Creek, he was at Glide, he was at
Yoncalla and Cole’s Valley,” says
Beckham. “These people lived all
over the valley in 1855. They lived
widely distributed throughout the
Willamette Valley and Macgruder
had to travel for several days to
track down all this property that
belonged to the people that were
removed to Grand Ronde.”
Macgruder’s inventory also seems
cold and very stark:
“Gilbat (Ind.) has near Mr. Bark-
er’s 42 bushels wheat $42.00 4 deer
skins $4.00 1 sack of Skins $5.00 3
Axes $3.00 1 Kettle $1.00 $55
“John Dickson (Ind.) has near Mr.
James Dickson 16 bushels wheat
$16.00 1 Cast iron oven $3.00 $19
“Bocus (Bogus) (Ind.) has at
James McKinneys 10 sacks or 20
Bushels wheat $20.00.”
But, stark as it may be, it is this
inventory that Beckham says is
the key to giving new life to Tribal
ancestors more than a century
and a half after it was compiled. It
gives them names and showed they
owned property.
Pioneer settlement began in the
Umpqua Valley in 1849 and 1850.
Macgruder’s inventory account
shows how unnecessary the Rogue
River Indian Wars were.
“Within five years of settle-
ment and the Native people of
the Umpqua Valley are farmers
to some extent,” says Beckham.
“Almost every one of them had
grain – bags of grain that they had
grown on their own farms. That to
me shows a remarkable resilience
and accommodation to a new life-
way – these people were doing it
on their own. They were engaged
in subsistence agriculture prior to
removal to the reservation. They
had families.”
Beckham reports that Metcalfe
arrived in Grand Ronde on Satur-
day, Feb. 2, with 380 people. He
then left Grand Ronde to join Am-
brose for the removal of the Rogue
Valley people to Grand Ronde that
started on Feb. 23.
And despite the work done to
tally a total figure for the benefit of
the Umpqua people, there is no re-
cord of the federal government ever
making restitution for the personal
assets abandoned by the Indians of
the Umpqua Valley. n