Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 23.djvu/32



22 C. F. COAN

During August and September, 1855, Palmer treated with the Indians along the Pacific Coast of Oregon from the mouth of the Columbia River to the California border. Several treaties were made by Palmer between August 11, 1855 and September 8, 1855, which contained a provision for a Coast reservation, and for the location of the other Indians of western Oregon upon it. The cession included all the lands west of the Coast Range in Oregon Territory. Although this treaty was never ratified, the reservation was set aside by an Executive Order, November 9, 1855, and the government took possession of the region. 49

The upper Umpqua Valley was ceded by the Molala In- dians, December 21, 1855, in a treaty made with them by Palmer. The Indians agreed to confederate with the Umpqua and Kalapuya who had ceded the middle Umpqua Valley in a treaty dated, November 29, 1854. The Indians agreed to re- move to the Yamhill encampment and to move later to the Coast Reservation, as soon as that location should be suffi- ciently improved to make it possible for them to obtain a living in that district. 50

The treaty with the Quinaielt which has been negotiated by A. J. Cain on the Quinaielt River, July 1, 1855, was signed by the Indians and by I. I. Stevens at Olympia, January 25, 1856. 51 This was the last treaty made until 1864.

The Genesis of the Yakinia Indian War. During the period that the superintendents of Indian Affairs for Washington and Oregon Territory were making the above treaties, that is ; between the fall of 1854 and the fall of 1855, the agents, in the various districts into which the territories were divided for purposes of Indian administration, were meeting with increased difficulties with the Indians. In the Fort Hall dis- trict, the agent for the Snake River country found it unsafe to remain in that area ; in southwestern Oregon, the country was disturbed by continual robberies committed by the In- dians ; in western Washington, the Nisqually Indians were dissatisfied with their reservation ; and the Chehalis and the

49 C. C. Royce, comp., "Indian Land Cessions in the United States," Bureau of American Ethnology, Eighteenth Annual Report, II, 812-13.

50 Kappler, op. cit., II, 740-42.

51 Ibid., II, 719-21.