Story
Summary
It is not known when people began living in the area now occupied by the Cow Creek Umpqua Indians and their non-Indian neighbors.
But the Cow Creek Umpqua Indians were the first to occupy their territory hundreds, if not thousands, of years before non-Indians began migrating into the area. The inward migration of non-Indians into Cow Creek territory resulted in a clash between two cultures, two distinct civilizations, with distinct attitudes and goals.
The story of the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians is the story of a peaceful people who were faced with the arrival of people who were essentially destructive of the Indian way of life. The outcome of the clash was hardly in doubt, since it was simply the next wave of a repetitive process that had been going on relentlessly for 300 years as non-Indian settlers spread out across the continent, obliterating Indian groups along the way.
The attitude of the migrating settlers toward the Indians of Oregon can be summarized by quoting the history book for Oregon school children from the early 1900's, in use for over twenty years.
"The Indians of the Oregon country represented various stages of savage and barbarian culture, ... [none] of them possessed even the rude beginnings of civilization. They were always poor, hungry and miserable. They had bows and arrows ... but beyond that stage they had not progressed. Those were truly savage men."
In 1853 seeking a peaceful solution to tensions that had intensified after gold was discovered in their territory, the Cow Creek Umpqua Indians entered into a treaty with the federal government that resulted in their ceding their homeland in exchange for $12,000. That sum worked out to be 2.3 cents per acre while the government was selling similar land to settlers for $1.25 per acre.
The Cow Creeks had been drawn into the Rogue Indian wars in the early 1850's, and as a result of the fighting and their new treaty, in 1856 survivors were rounded up and forcefully marched 150 miles north to their Grand Ronde reservation.
Reservation life was a failure especially because shortly after the Indians arrived, non-Indians began seeking ways to take back the resource-rich reservation land. By 1904 about 80 % of the reservation lands had reverted to public domain lands open to non-Indian settlement.
In 1954 the government declared that there were no Indians left in western Oregon, the existing Cow Creeks notwithstanding, and the Tribe was terminated.
In 1980 the Cow Creek Umpqua Indians were granted permission to file a suit over the value of the land taken from them in the original treaty in 1853. In 1982 the Tribe was restored and entered into formal relations with the United States government through the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
In 1984 the Cow Creek Umpqua land claim was settled out of court and the Tribe received $1.3 million after legal fees. The government tried to force the Tribe to distribute the money to its members on a per capita basis, but the Tribe, through Congressional action, successfully resisted; and, instead, invested the money in Tribal businesses which have been highly successful and continue to grow.