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The Cow Creek Band of the Umpqua Tribe of Indians has recently achieved a important legal victory.
President Jimmy Carter signed into law a bill recognizing the Cow Creek Band as a federally recognized Band of Indians.
This legal status as a federally recognized Indian Band will allow the Cow Creeks to file claims for treaty violations in the U.S. Court of Claims.
The Cow Creeks can request financial compensation from the U.S. government as the permanent reservation that was promised was never established.By Marguerite Taliaferro
"Truly we were the forgotten people, " says John Young, a director of the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians.
The group's efforts to be remembered and recognized came to a head recently when President Carter signed a bill allowing the band to file claims for treaty violations in the U.S. Court of Claims.
Yet at time in the history of the Canyonville group of Indians, their very survival depended on being as hidden from whites as possible.
Their story, say the Cow Creek Indians, is the story of seven families who survived epidemics, wars, manhunts and an ever-increasing percentage of white blood in their veins.
And their case is one in which the drama of Douglas County's early history will bear on a legal case of today.
One of the most frequently quoted historical authorities on the Cow Creek Indians is George Riddle's book "Early Days in Oregon."
According to the book, Mi-wa-leta was the chief of five bands of Indians, all of whom comprise about two hundred souls, by far the strongest tribe of the Umpqua Valley.
They spoke the same language as the Rogue River Indian, or Indians as far south as the Siskiyous. The bands were divided about as follows, and each band and chief has the name of the locality where they made their home.
All the north side of the creek in Cow Creek Valley was Mi-wa-leta and the Indians numbered about 75.
The south side of the creek was Quintiousa, the head man took the same name and was sometimes called Augunsah, the name of the country of the South Umpqua east of Canyonville. The Quintiousas were about 50 strong.
The Targunsans were about 25. Their head man was called ‘Little Old Man.' And in the Cow creek country east of Glendale was a band of 25 or 30 whose head man was know as ‘Wartahoo.' In addition to the above, there was a band known as the Myrtle Creek Indians, about 40 in number but who their chief was I never knew."
What happened to the Indians after the coming of the white man is explained by a modern Oregon historian, Stephan Dow Beckham, who testified in congressional hearings on behalf of the Cow Creek.
"Several white families moved into the land of the Cow Creeks and hundreds of goldseekers did so in 1852-1853 when a minor gold rush occurred in the valley of Cow Creek itself.
The Cow Creek Indians, speakers of one of five Athabaskan language dialects in southwestern Oregon, found that these newcomers were soon fencing their lands by splitting rails. "The settlers and miners prohibited the Indians from field burning which was a common practice in renewing the berry patches and seed crops in the valley. The fires would, of course, burn up the split rail fences of those settlers.
The settlers and goldminers brought in hogs. The hogs ate up the acorns and rooted out the bulbs which were staples in the diet of these people.
"Using guns, the settlers killed off the deer and the elk and, of course, from their goldmining, the debris that cascaded down their streams wiped out some of the salmon runs and the steelhead.
"The years 1853 to 1856 were one of almost constant warfare between whites and Indians in southwestern Oregon. During this period, various bands of Oregon mounted volunteers, also know in the region as the 'exterminators,' made forays through the lands of the Cow Creeks. They murdered several of the members of that tribe or band.
"A series of these events – murders, the gold rush, the settling of whites on Indian lands without prior cession – led in September 1853 to the negotiation of the Cow Creak Treaty."
But the signing of the treaty meant peace for only two years. In October of 1855 the Rogue River Indian War broke out.
Many of the Cow Creeks fled into the mountains to hide.
History does not record what happened to all the members of the Miwaleta's original five bands.
Riddle, however, does record the fate of some of these Indians. One group of women, children and aged Indians who were hiding at the head of Rick Creek were discovered by whites and taken to Grande Ronde reservation in northern Oregon.
In addition, a small group of Indian men was entreated by Rogue River Indians to take a stand against the whites. Riddle relates the last conference their leader Tom held with the white man during which he explained to his white friends why he was going to fight.
"The relation of this last conference with the Indians impressed itself indelibly upon my mind and memory and I can visualize the meeting and the participants:
My father stated the desire of the white settlers for the Indians to remain at peace and to camp near our house (near Riddle) until the troubles on the Rogue River Valley were over, and offering protection.
"Chief Tom was spokesman for the Indians. He did not question the sincerity of my father and admitted that he had always been fair and just with them but questioned his ability to protect them.
"Tom, in a quite eloquent manner, recited their grievances since the coming of the white man. The Indian believed that the white people meant to exterminate them whether they remained at peace or not. Tom did not express animosity towards anyone in the neighborhood but throughout the conference expressed the conviction that the Indians were doomed to be exterminated, but that they would die fighting."
Riddle records only a single hostile incident in which this group of Cow Creeks were involved. They surrounded and fired upon the Harrison Rice family home on Rice Creek. No whites were killed.
Following the incident, white volunteers hunted the group and in a battle on Olalla Creek, Tom was killed but other members of his group escaped and hid out.
According to Beckham's congressional testimony, "In May of 1856, Agent James P. Day of Canyonville was to round them (the Indians) up but he failed to do so as did soldier Ben Simpson four years later in 1860
He reported to the Superintendent J.W. Perit Huntington that he took part of his command and went to get them but all he was able to find for his efforts was their smoldering campfires.
The Cow Creeks had fled to the mountains where some were to remain in hiding for several years."
From a different viewpoint comes another account of those times. In his congressional testimony, Cow Creek director Young told this story which had been related to him by his great-grandfather, Tom Rondeau, who died when Young was 10 years old.
"He told of the gathering of our people for the signing of the treaty. He said there was much happiness and celebrating. The white man's army was going to take care of them.
There would be no more killing of the people. They could live in peace forever and have their own land where the white man could not bother them anymore.
"He told of the army helping to build a fence around a small piece of land, of buildings on it, of plowing it and helping them to seed it. They gave some of the people clothes, blankets and a few cattle.
"He said that later the army came back and took everything. Some who protested were shot; some who did not protest were shot anyway.
He told of them running to the mountains with the army chasing them. He said the bunch he went with went south up Cow Creek into the mountains. Some starved to death, for they had nothing but what the land would furnish, and it was winter.
"He said they stayed in the mountains for a long time. When they came out, he worked for a white settler. This white settler wanted to help them. He went to the camp where they were living and told them, if they went to the Grand Ronde Reservation, they would be given blankets, food, clothing and a place to live.
"The people no longer trusted the white man's word. So they sent him as a runner to see what this reservation was like. Shortly before this, his brother was shot and killed. He was rounding up the settler's milk cows to put them in the corral for the night when two white hunters came by and just shot him. For this reason, he could only travel at night for fear of being shot, as his little brother had been.
"He said it was dark hours of the morning when he got to the first village of the reservation. He waited until light to show himself. He said that houses were made of sticks, some with rock walls, and some with stick roofs.
He said the people were sick and dying – starving to death. They had no food, no clothes, no blankets.
"They were ashamed for they had nothing to offer a tired traveler. He needed moccasins; but they were all barefooted. He said the people were all mixed up. He found some who could speak.
He could find none who could speak his language, but he was able to converse with them in the language that is called the traders' jargon.
"He said he went to other villages, and they were all the same. He said that in one of the houses he looked into there was a dead woman with a baby trying to nurse her. He said he left that night. He said it did not take him long to get home for he ran all the way.
"When he got home, he told his people of the terrible things that he had seen. He said he would never go to a land that had nothing but sticks and rocks. If he was going to starve, he would do it in his own land."