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The Cow Creek Indians have been in Oregon for over 6,000 years and family legends go back to when Crater Lake blew up.
However, the traditional life style ended in the 1850's. Many of the Cow Creek men died in the Rogue Indian Wars and the army forced a lot of the women and children to resettle on the Grande Ronde reservation in northern Oregon.
Yet certain legends and ways of life have managed to survive and the tribe is organizing to relearn its culture and protect its Indian rights.By Marguerite Taliaferro
Chuck Jackson wears a necklace of bobcat claws. His shirt is studded with silver buttons made with tools he forged himself.
The 44-year old Drew resident is a member of the Cow Creek Bank of the Umpqua Indians. He also happens to own his own museum, drive a 1950 hearse with purple velvet upholstery and live in the same log cabin in which he grew up.
His family has lived in Oregon for over 6,000 years. Jackson claims. "Our legends go back to when Crater Lake blew up. "he explains.
Although Jackson is only one-eight Umpqua Indian. The Bureau of Indian Affairs sent him to school where he earned straight A's in an auto mechanics program. Later he says, they denied he was an Umpqua.
He has some harsh words for the bureau. "I don't believe anything the federal government says," he says flatly.
He claims the tribe has tried to obtain papers on treaties and the tribe's history and they were told the documents were destroyed.
Jackson says his tribe later obtained the documents through the Freedom of Information Act.
Those documents and other historical papers are filed in a suitcase which Jackson carries with him much of the time. The papers are important to his organization's struggle for pride and legitimacy.
During the Rogue River Indian wars in the early 1850s, Jackson says, the men of the tribe went to help the Rogue River Indians. They never returned home, the family account says.
Women and children of the tribe were transported to Grand Ronde reservation and the tribal culture came to an end. Yet certain legends and ways of life managed to survive.
Jackson's great-grandmother, Susan Nonta Thomason, was an interpreter during the Indian wars when she was 12. Later, she did return to the Elk Creek Valley and became well know for doctoring the sick.
Nowadays, the tribe is organizing to relearn its culture and protect its Indian rights.
The Cow Creek Bank of Umpqua Indians has been meeting regularly and officially for four or five years.
However, says Jackson the members have always "stayed in contact" and there are records of tribal meeting from the late 1920s and 1930s.
"Our numbers vary. We do genealogies and we're finding people all the time. There are around 700 members now, " say Jackson.
The band has joined with other Indians in Douglas, Coos and Curry counties to form Indian Economic Development Corporation. The corporation plans to build a factory near Coos Bay to employ Indians. The factory will make fish meal and fertilizer from fish waste.
Jackson is on the board of director for the project.
Jackson is an artisan, too. He displays a large white stone pipe he carved himself.
"I'm the only one now who makes these," he says. This is his "beaver pipe," he says, pointing to the two animals carved on the pipestem. They were a symbol of wealth for an Indian, he explains.
The pipe is made from local pipestone which Jackson claims is far superior to the famous Minnesota red pipestone. The location of his stone quarry is, however, "a deep dark secret."
Previously only his half-Indian grandmother knew its location. He would ask her many times to show it to him but she would only reply, "Sometime I'll tell you."
Eventually she was satisfied he really wanted to know. She still did not reveal the location but directed him to a certain spot and told her grandson the pipestone "is not far from here."
She meant, said Jackson, the quarry is anywhere within a two-mile radius. His grandmother felt if he hunted for it, the pipestone would mean more to him.
When he carves a pipe, says Jackson, he never knows beforehand what will happen. "I sit down and get ready. Then I see the design and all I have to do is follow it. I can't explain it, but that's what happens." He describes specific designs which have come to him while lying in bed. The pipes have won Jackson a ribbon at he Douglas County Fair.
He also knows how to make Indian jewelry, arrowheads and stone knives.
Jackson's interest in the past extends to more than just his Indian ancestors.
He and wife Judy, who one-eight Cherokee, have created a museum to house their antiques and curiosities. Their collection is displayed in the old Tison schoolhouse which Jackson dismantled and moved to his home.
The one-room log building was constructed in 1906. Jackson attended school there as a child. Nowadays, the front of the building is studded with deer antlers, old tolls, furniture and stamp from the local Wells Fargo office. On the porch sits an old cavalry forge designed to be dismantled and packed on a mule. Beside it is an old still from Riddle.
Inside the "Rogue Umpqua Museum," artifacts are everywhere.
A Chinese umbrella owned by a descendant of Amelia Earhart hangs in the rafters. Below it are old store showcases from J.P. Hugo's store in Hugo, Josephine County. The cases are filled with oddities such as Hudson Bay trade spoons, a four-cylinder mousetrap and petrified teeth.
Nearby, rattlesnakes stew in solution. Jackson plans to tan the hides when he gets time.
He points out an 1871 telegraph pole from Nevada. "That pole put the Pony Express out business, " he says.
Next he fingers a crack in the stock of an Indian rifle used during the Modoc wars with Captain Jack. The gun is marked with the name "Mefe" and is notched five times.
"Most Indian rifles have broken stocks," he says. They only allotted one shot per animal, he explains. If the animal was not killed instantly, the Indian would hit it in the head with the rifle butt.
After his museum is duly admired Jackson offers a tour of various Indian sites around Drew.
The first stop on the tour is an Indian village site. In an open field along Highway 227 Jackson points to the circular depressions in the ground where Indians put their teepees many years ago.
Close by in the shade of trees, his grandmother lived during the summertime. She slept outdoors, says Jackson. Her camp consisted of a fire ring, a stool, a bench and boards nailed to a tree for a kitchen.
The land belonged to a lumber company, Jackson continues, but his grandmother didn't really understand that. "To her, you should be able to live wherever you wanted to." The older people also had hard time understanding money, he says.
A few miles away an old Indian burial ground tops a knoll where Jackson's Indian greatgrandmother and her husband homesteaded long ago
Some graves are unmarked and others are marked only with a stone bearing a rough cross. Jackson gestures across the more recent graves of his brother, grandmother, greatgrandmother and great uncles.
"You've met my family now," he says.