Territorial History, Reservations, Treaties & Mining
        Exploring the Pacific Northwest Prior to Statehood: Tribal Homelands

The Spanish first land-based venture outside of Nootka Bay was to establish gold mining (ad)ventures on the Island.  After otter and beaver furs, mining was the driving force of explorers who wished to “harvest the riches and return to home.”  These Europeans (though some were Chinese) explored the hills and valleys of this large Canadian island and then all of the West, trespassing through many an Indigenous camp.  It is no surprise that Artifact Spanish Coin was found around Bonhoeffer Gardens abandoned (with the building of the I-5 Freeway in 1972) creek bed.  Miners walked everywhere and they carried rifles, especially along streams where the Indigenous lived.  It was miners who perpetrated the massacre of Willamette Valley Indigenous, it was mining that spurred the payment of $5/head (not scalps) in Shasta County.  It was the promise of future gold that spurred the English and American Beaver Treaties that caused the almost extinction of that animal in a great part of the West.  For the Indigenous it meant War, for the pioneers it meant Pioneer Blockhouses.  For the leading tribe, the Nisqually, it meant disaster.  If it were not for the Pig War, the extinction in Washington and British Columbia of Natives might have matched that of Oregon and northern California.  Judge any written history of this time as to their mentioning (or not) of Fox Island.  The use of islands to isolate, starve, and manage Indigenous Peoples was a long-proven way of dealing with sovereign nations resisting invasion.  Reservations and treaties are what are studied but focus on the islands and what led up to them; starvation is the key to unlock understanding. The West’s wars with Natives were “food wars,” A Treaty Topic Neglected. It was only later that the rich farmland in the Willamette Valley and Puget Sound attracted farmers and their fences (bringing with them the concept of property rights and land ownership). Forest Groves and Forest Glades, tended informally for 1,000s of years, were already disappearing. In today’s Washington State, remnants of 2 million people going to 20,000 were divided among 29 reservations, 10,000 Native Americans went into 6 reservations in Oregon … and California’s history is even more devastating.  Indigenous Peoples, like Americans today, found California’s climate wonderful in the winter and untold, perhaps a million, populace might have once lived around the San Joaquín Valley’s shorelines (it was a lake then).  Compared to the East, the West is a beautiful place to live. Most of the West (certainly of Canada) was then under the control of the Hudson’s Bay Co. managed by John McLoughlin who when he retired, rode south to live out his days in Oregon City, the Willamette Valley.  Up to the time of the Civil War (1859), starting in the mid 1830’s, 400,000 immigrants had used the Oregon Trail to begin the Pioneer (farmers) Flood of the West. Unlike the explorers, trappers and miners, they were arriving to stay. They were not returning to the East with their exploited riches. For related Topics: Land Claims before the Homestead Act, Mining/Other Wastes, Pioneer Blockhouses and Root Cellars.

When 10 highlighted Lesson sections have been reviewed and answered, select the State or Province below for a Completion of Record.

Alberta British Columbia
Alaska California Colorado Idaho Montana      
New Mexico Oregon Utah Washington Wyoming

Territorial History, Reservations & Mining

Ethnobotanicals and native animals also mentioned: The 3 Sisters: Beans, Corn and Squash; Big Animals: Orca, Whales and Buffalo/Bison; Cedars: Western Redcedar, Alaska Yellow and Port Orford; Canoes: Birch, Cottonwood and Cedar.