|
|
|
|
|
Cow Creek Umpqua Indian Chairman Sue Shaffer speaks wistfully about the struggles of her ancestors, the French connection and the dawning of the new era.
Rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the Rogue River Indian wars would have been impossible for the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians without the determination of its seven founding families and Congressional recognition.
Sue Shaffer, chairwoman of the modern-day tribe, speaks wistfully about the struggles of her ancestors.
Her great-great-grandfather, Nonta-Algonkin, was a free-trapper. Nonta and his wife had two children, Susan and Louis. He hailed from the Ottawa River Valley on the present-day border of Ontario and Quebec.
His life was dangerous. Brushes with hostile Indians, inclement weather and treacherous terrain were par for the course. His wife died delivering a third child, and he died soon after.
"We think somewhere in the Rocky Mountains," Shaffer said.
Descendants of the seven founding families, including the Nontas, paid tribute to their ancestors by naming the Tribe's Canyonville hotel, casino and resort "Seven Feathers." But a complicated 19th century history and intertribal squabbles in the 1970s nearly stymied efforts to gain recognition and make long-held dreams realities.THE FRENCH CONNECTION
Bureau of Indian Affairs officials scoured Umpqua Valley mountains and canyons searching for reservation escapees and hold-outs following the 1855-56 Rogue River Indian Wars.
Shaffer said the 20 years following the war were tenuous. Although Indians maintained a nonconfrontational relationship with settlers, "they feared exterminators and rough-neck miners," Shaffer said. "Plus, the BIA was trying to round everyone up and take them to the reservation."
Rumors of "wild Indians" bombarded the Oregon Department of Indian Affairs.
Olalla battle participant I.B. Nichols wrote Oregon Superintendent of Indian Affairs Joel Palmer saying, "The Indians are in the mountains. I think we will kill them soon, that is the Cow Creeks." In 1857, Indian Agent S.C. Smith wrote about "a small band of Indians, say 40, on the headwaters of the North Umpqua River calling themselves Molallies that haven't been treatied with." In 1863, they learned about Indians who were "frequently annoying the white settlers in the eastern part of the Umpqua Valley."
Finding no Cow Creeks, they considered them extinct. But in remote areas like Tiller, Peel and Drew, American Indians lived unrestricted.
Shaffer said focus on survival was paramount.
She said American Indians "knew no boundaries" -- that cultures intertwined and marriage to French-Canadian fur traders and Americans came naturally because of traditional pre-war intertribal unions.
The trade established by the Hudson's Bay Co., Northwest Co. and the Pacific Fur Co. wasn't driven by the entrepreneurs who collected wealth from the enterprise, but by Indians and Hawaiians who trapped and served as guides when the West was still wild.
The tribe's link to the fur trade is found in the names of its seven founding families -- Nonta, Rondeau, LaChance, Rainville, Pariseau, Dumont, Petit and Dompierre. French-Canadian voyageurs would often take "country wives" met while trading with tribes. Their descendants make up today's tribe.
Some of these unions proved disastrous, as was the case for Emerance Gagnon and company man Hubert Petit.
"He was mean to her," said Michael Rondeau, the band's current government operations officer. She left the abusive relationship and found solace with another trapper, Pierre Groslouis. Emerance lived to be 106, Rondeau said, and had five husbands.
Orphaned Susan Nonta's marriage to Kentucky-born William Thomason fared better. The pair married while she was serving as an interpreter at Fort Colville's Catholic mission near the Canadian border in 1857.
"It was a very devoted relationship," Shaffer said of her great-grandparents. When Thomason was murdered in Canyonville over a ranching dispute, Susan was heartbroken.
Charles Rondeau was a Hudson's Bay Co. canoe middleman from 1815-27 and was a trapper on the Snake River Brigade through 1833. While trading at Fort Umpqua near Tyee in 1834, he came to the aid of Hall J. Kelley, who was part of Ewing Young's horse drive from California.
Kelley fell ill with malaria near Roseburg and was rescued by Hudson's Bay Co. man Michel LaFramboise.
Kelley wrote, "Captain (LaFramboise) engaged an Indian chief to take me in a canoe, forty or fifty miles down the Umpqua. At first the chief declined, saying, that the upper part of the river was not navigable. Finally, in view of a bountiful reward, he consented to try... At the landing, the faithful Indian received of my property, a fine horse, saddle and bridle, a salmon knife and a scarlet velvet sash, and was satisfied. Rondeau, whom the Captain had appointed to be my attendant and guide, was ready at the bank to conduct me a few miles distant."
In 1837, Rondeau became a farmer at French Prairie in Champoeg, near the present-day state capital of Salem. He married at least three American Indian women. His sons, Jean-Baptiste "Tom" and George Rondeau, who married into the Dumont line, lived in Douglas County.
Retired trapper Alexander Dumont, a self-described "half-breed Sauteaux from Green Bay," and Pierre Pariseau, a Fort Umpqua employee who deserted to seek wealth during the California Gold Rush, also farmed at French Prairie.
Both relocated to Douglas County after the prairie was inundated with white settlers who disliked "half-breeds." By staking claims on the remote South Umpqua and Little River, they hoped to recapture the ambiance of Champoeg prior to the U.S. acquiring Oregon. They were successful.COMING OUT OF HIDING
Members of the band's founding families purchased homesteads in the 1860s through 1880s, and spent the next 50 years trying to blend in.
But Shaffer said tribal women continued to participate in traditional activities like tanning hides, making buckskin garments and embroidering gloves, purses and pillows. Their families would regularly meet at a huckleberry patch near Tiller, at South Umpqua Falls and private homes.
Shaffer's mother, Ellen "Nellie" Crispen, took notes during tribal meetings -- a fortuitous decision that later opened the door to federal recognition.
Crispen had a passion for politics and books. Her political acumen prompted her to spearhead attempts to obtain federal recognition and compensation for area Indians. With the help of her mother, Mary Furlong, she pored over legal texts.
Sen. Charles McNary introduced bills on behalf of southern Oregon's tribes in 1926, 1928 and 1932 due to Crispen's efforts. The last passed both houses before being vetoed by President Herbert Hoover.
"I grew up with all this tribal effort in my mother's generation, and they'd been rooked," Shaffer said.BUILDING THE URBAN INDIAN
Caught between the trapping era and the industrial age, tribal members were trying to carve out a new identity in a changing society.
Tom Rondeau's son, Walt, worked for the U.S. Forest Service and was involved in building the Tiller Trail Highway. Other tribesmen were employed by the Civilian Conservation Corps.
The Great Depression had a class-equalizing influence on the county, Shaffer said. After World War II, more timber industry jobs were available and women worked in shipyards and other industries.
Assimilation came at a price -- histories began to blur.
Tribal member Robert Buschmann, now deceased, told The News-Review in 1978 they didn't seek remuneration as Cow Creeks after the Indian Claims Act passed in 1946, because they weren't informed of eligibility and thought they were members of the Umpqua tribe, or some other band.
"Joel Palmer gave them that name because the treaty was signed on Cow Creek," he said. They never thought of themselves that way.
Exacerbating the issue of identity, in the '50s Congress passed the Termination Resolution ending its sovereign relationship with certain tribes, including the Cow Creek. In 1956, the Relocation Act created job training programs for American Indians in urban areas, causing them to move off their reservations and never return.
"They were trying to create the urban Indian," Shaffer said.
Michael Rondeau said some older members of the tribe were angered by having to prove their "legitimacy."
Several in the band tried to receive restitution after the Lower Umpqua and Rogue River Indians won a land claims case against the U.S. in 1955, but were rejected because they couldn't prove Umpqua ancestry.
"My dad would get upset. He didn't understand how they could send them to school in the '50s as Indians, but then deny it 20 years later," Rondeau said.DAWNING OF A NEW ERA
In the 1970s, societal and political attitudes about Indians changed.
In this climate, tribal members met Coos Bay native, ethno-historian and author Stephen Dow Beckham, who told local media a Congressional recognition bill would allow the Indians to seek damages in the U.S. Court of Claims.
The federal government believed the terms of the treaty had been fulfilled by compensating the Cow Creeks who were removed to the Grand Ronde Reservation. Beckham saw an opportunity to press the claim for recognition by seeking compensation for Douglas County Indians claiming to be remnants of that tribe. He used Nellie Crispen's records to show an unbroken chain of tribal activity.
U.S. Rep. Jim Weaver and Sen. Mark Hatfield championed the tribe's effort.
Congress officially recognized the band in 1982. On June 12, 1984, the U.S. Court of Claims awarded them a $1.5 million settlement for loss of their reservation, damages for taking tribal land without compensation, taking minerals from aboriginal lands and U.S. Fifth Amendment violations committed in taking those lands.
The tribe requested the judgment be invested, allowing funds to accrue interest to be used for programs. They wanted to avoid a one-time per capita payment, which historically proved devastating for tribes who spent the money as soon as they got it, Shaffer said.
The BIA refused, claiming a tribal membership roll presented to Congress wasn't an authentic list of lineal descendants of the Cow Creek band who signed the treaty in 1853.
"We didn't need a piece of paper from Congress to tell us who we are," Michael Rondeau said.
The bureau was angry with the band, he added, because they had gone directly to Congress for approval, side-stepping the BIA's Federal Acknowledgment Program.
Rondeau said the program was considered inefficient, and tribes could expect to wait as many as 20 years for recognition. Further, the BIA refused to weigh the fact that "tribal histories are oral histories," he said.BUREAU WON'T BUDGE
The tribe were denied access to health care, education and vocational training benefits.
Ross Swimmer, assistant secretary of the Department of the Interior's Indian affairs office, wrote in 1985 that judgment funds should "benefit the aggrieved historic tribe for which the award was made. If the historic tribe is no longer in existence, we believe that judgment funds should be programmed ... to the present-day successor tribe."
Tensions mounted within the tribe. Lawsuits were filed and banishment of members was discussed.
Disputes were caused by BIA officials who pitted tribal members against each other -- individuals who wanted a lump-sum payment and people jockeying for position in the tribal hierarchy, Rondeau said.
He added the band discussed banishing the opposing faction, "but decided it wouldn't be in the best interest of the tribe."
A 1986 civil case brought by disgruntled tribal members who weren't listed on the roll prompted U.S. Magistrate Michael Hogan to rule the tribe's bylaws didn't represent a governing document and the roll was a "corporate" list, not a roll of tribal membership. The case fueled a BIA decision to refuse to recognize the tribe's elected governing body, saying it couldn't determine tribal leadership, membership, or if it had a valid governing document. They suspended tribal services in 1987.
Shaffer told the media at the time, "For any bureaucracy to tell us what to do is out."
To settle the matter, Congress passed a rider on an appropriations bill, which redefined distribution of Cow Creek funds. Three categories for tribal enrollment were established: Indian individuals on the roll submitted to Congress, Indian individuals who are descended from people on that roll, and Indian individuals who apply to the BIA for enrollment and prove Cow Creek/Umpqua ancestry.
U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Springfield, said he was moved to support the tribe because, "Sue Shaffer had a vision for tribal self-sufficiency."
Controversies had to be set aside in order to look at the big picture, DeFazio said.
"I look at the economic benefit to the tribe," he said. "They've multiplied their investment a number of times. It worked out better for everybody in the aggregate."
The action still didn't quell the controversy and the BIA wouldn't budge. A 1988 letter to Swimmer, cosigned by Sens. Hatfield and Bob Packwood, removed all doubt about the intent of the bill.
"The Portland Area Director, Bureau of Indian Affairs, expressed his belief that there could be disenrollment of tribal members with Indian ancestors unless they can prove Cow Creek/Umpqua ancestry. Such a notion was rejected by Congress," the letter stated.
The BIA was charged with creating its own roll and restoring funds. The BIA's roll, which was identical to the one the tribe produced a decade earlier, was published in the Federal Register the next year, Rondeau said.
"It's funny really," Shaffer said. "Now we're their shining star, their success story. But it took a lot to get here."
Rondeau said tribal members have mended fences.
"It was a healing and cleansing of the soul," he said. "We've really come together and gotten beyond it."
<<< History of the Cow Creeks >>>