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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 home.” These Europeans (though some were Chinese) explored the hills and valleys of this North Pacific 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 (Apache, Comanche, Navajo, Ute and Zuni) 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 the Snake River valleys. For the Indigenous it meant War, for the pioneers it meant Pioneer Blockhouses. If it were not for the Pig War, the Indian Wars would capture more historical attention. 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. Reservations and treaties are what are studied, remnants of 2 million people going to 20,000 divided among 29 reservations in the State of Washington, 10,000 into 6 reservations in Oregon … and California’s more devastating history are rarely mentioned. California’s Indigenous Peoples, like Americans today, found California’s climate wonderful in the winter and untold, perhaps a million, populace might have lived around the San Joaquín Valley’s shorelines; it was a lake then. 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 began to disappear. 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 in the Willamette Valley. Up to the time of the Civil War (1861), starting in the mid 1830’s, 400,000 immigrants had used the Oregon Trail to begin the Pioneer (farmers) Flood of the West. Thats 10 pioneers for each 1 Native American, growing to 100x that by the turn of the Century. Unlike the explorers, trappers and miners, they were arriving to stay. They were not returning to the East with exploited riches.