Indian-white relations in early Oregon are often viewed in terms of warfare and treatymaking, but these are only the most obvious aspects of a larger struggle to resolve cultural conflicts, settle land disputes, and establish order in a new territory. Additional understanding of both white attitudes toward Indians and of Indian exasperation with the settlers may be gained from a study of how criminal justice applied to the red man during the turbulent pre-reservation era. Prior to the coming of America settlers, Oregon Indians knew the justice of the Hudson's Bay Company. In dealing with personas accused of harming HBC personnel or property, Dr. John McLoughlin acted with firmness and persistence while taking cognizance of the Indian's own ideas of just treatment, The American leaders of later years sometimes imitated McLoughlin's firmness but failed to recognize the importance of Indian tradition. Dr. Elijah White, after bring appointed the first U.S. Indian agent for Oregon in 1842, presented the natives with a law code which largely ignored their own traditions and confused them by making major offenses of what had formerly been viewed as minor infractions. Dr. White assured his charges that the new law code came from God and was recognized by all civilized nations. A similar smugness was apparent in later leaders who were convinced that the court proceedings against Indian troublemakers could not help but make a deep and beneficial impression on the defendants' fellow tribesman. Such assurance sometimes blinded the whites to inequities in their application of justice to Indian-white disputes and this blindness contributed to friction between the races. Criminal justice for Indians was a more complex matter during Oregon's territorial period than it had been during the HBC era. To the Indians, the British had been trading partners, but the Americans were dispossessors. A sizable influx of settlers preceded the signing of the Indian treaties, and the presence of two divergent cultures on the same disputed ground made necessary some means of dealing with the disagreements which inevitably arose. But civil officials, army officers, judges, and Indian agents were still working out their respective spheres of influence while new settlers might be many miles away from any hands. The belief expressed by leading figures in the army and the Indian Bureau that whites were to blame for outbreaks of violence did not encourage irate settlers or miners to rely on these agencies to settle disputes with Indians, and citizens' courts, minors' committees, or indiscriminate reprisals were often only forms of "justice" employed. Indians noted the infrequencies of prosecution for whites who committed crimes against them and complained that the whites had one set of laws for themselves and another for the red man, Adverse public opinion worked against the efforts of Indian superintendent Joel Palmer to correct this grievance, and lawyers sometimes questioned whether Indian were, in fact, "persons" or whether their mistreatment could constitute a crime. Even Dick Johnson, a successful Indian farmer who abandoned his native culture and won the support of Palmer and of Jesse Applegate in his efforts to model his life on white men's ideals, had so little legal identity that his suspected murderers were not tried and one of them was allowed to take his farm. Segregation of land and of peoples was the distraction in which both the law and public opinion pointed in Oregon Territory. Consciously and unconsciously, whites encouraged Indians to accept a reservation solution to the problems generated by land-hunger and culture clash, and among these problems legal discrimination and vigilante justice figured prominently. Hatred of the Indians among many of the settlers contributed substantially to distortion and non-application of criminal justice, but even with favorable public opinion, as in the case of Dick Johnson, the law itself was insufficient for an Indian who did not remove himself from white society and accept the treaty protections of the reservation.

The present study was a response to the discovery of two artifacts found in a ditch wall near Harney Lake, Oregon. These were lying on a buried lake floor that appeared to be of late Pleistocene or early Recent age. Other sediments exposed in the ditch seemed to relate to at least some of the phases of the pluvial lake sequence in the Harney Basin. Three problems were considered: (1) the geomorphology and dating of the pluvial lake stillstands, (2) whether the original artifacts were part of a larger early site, and (3) whether there was any relationship between archaeological sites and geomorphic features in the area. These problems were approached in the field by stratigraphic mapping of exposed sediments and by an archaeological survey of a defined study area. Test excavations were made adjacent to the location of the original artifact discovery to search for other cultural material. Beachline records of four stillstands of Pluvial Lake Malheur are preserved in the exposed sediments. The youngest beachline is undated. Three others were 14C dated from associated fossil molluscs at 32,000, 9620 and 8680 B.P. At least in the case of the 8680 B.P. lake, the Harney Basin was filled to overflowing and was a part of the Columbia River system. The Voltage basalt flow, which dammed the outlet of the Basin in Malheur Gap, was in place by 32,000 years ago. There is no evidence for a diversion of the Basin outlet to Crane Gap following this event. Molluscan fossils and diatoms were used, along with soil texture analyses, to help identify and differentiate sedimentary deposits and to draw environmental inferences. Artifacts were found both on and beneath buried beach deposits of the 8680 B.P. lake. Four of the five sites in the study area were either on wave-cut terraces or other lakeshore features associated with this lake. Diagnostic artifacts are Lind Coulee points, crescents, basally ground leaf-shaped points, and what are apparently true blades. The sites seem to have been located to take advantage of shallow water littoral zone resources. Fish may have been an important dietary item of the early Harney Basin dwellers. Large salmonid vertebrae from fish in the 10 kg weight class are found on the playa. By using the relationship between landforms and elevations it may be possible to predict the general age class of other sites on the margin of the playas.

The Coast Reservation of Oregon was established under Executive Order of President Franklin Pierce in November, 1855, as a homeland for the southern Oregon tribes. It was an immense, isolated wilderness, parts of which had burned earlier in the century. There were some prairies where farming was possible, but because the reservation system itself and farming, particularly along the coast, were unknown entities, life for the Indians was a misery for years. Those responsible for the establishment of the reservation were subject to the vagaries of the weather, the wilderness, the Congress, and the Office of Indian Affairs. Agents were accountable, not only for the lives of Oregon Indians, but also for all of the minute details involved in answering to a governmental agency. Some of the agents were experienced with the tribes of western Oregon; others were not. All of them believed that the only way to keep the Indians from dying out was to teach them the European American version of agriculturalism. Eventually, if possible, Oregon Indians would be assimilated into the dominant culture. Most agents held out little hope for the adults of the tribes. This thesis lays out the background for the development of United States Indian policies. European Americans' ethnocentric ideas about what constituted civilization became inextricably woven into those policies. Those policies were brought in their infant stage to Oregon. Thus, the work on the reservations was experimental, costing lives and destroying community. How those policies were implemented on the Coast Reservation from 1856-1877 concludes this study. / Graduation date: 2000 / Best scan available for photos. Original is a black and white photocopy.

This project hypothesizes that the use of multiple ground-based remote sensing methods can collectively characterize the geophysical signatures of four marked human burials at the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians historic period cemetery. If the geophysical signatures of the marked burials can be characterized, these signatures may be used to located unmarked burials within the Siletz cemetery. To investigate this hypothesis, several research questions focused on the results from topographic, cesium gradiometer, and ground-penetrating radar surveys. A 15m x 15m region of the cemetery containing four marked burials defines the survey region. The results of each survey were individually and collectively examined to identify the characteristic geophysical signatures of the four marked burials. The topographic and magnetic surveys identified geophysical anomalies spatially associated with the some of the marked burials. The ground-penetrating radar survey was the most productive by identifying geophysical anomalies spatially associated with all four marked burials. Even though signals from the burials appeared with mixed results, it proved difficult to characterize the geophysical signatures of the burials in the individual and collective geophysical data. Without a characterization of the geophysical signature of the marked burials, it is difficult to identify unmarked burials at the Siletz cemetery. Due to the success of the radar at "seeing" all four marked burials it may be possible to identify areas free of unmarked burials. / Graduation date: 2001

Artifacts recovered from archaeological excavations near the Willamette River in Lake Oswego, Oregon indicate the presence there of a Late Windust-Early Cascade Phase site possibly dating to 9,000 B.P. The assemblage includes 137 projectile points, bifaces or point fragments, nearly all of the Cascade-type. Two stem fragments and one complete point which are similar to those of the Windust Phase which dates 10,000-8,000 B.P. in the southern Columbia Plateau also were found. Stone knives, choppers, scrapers, hammerstones, cores and microblades also are included in the assemblage. No later type notched or stemmed points have been recovered from the site. If the hypothesized dates are valid, the site will be the oldest discovered to date in the Lower Willamette River-Portland Basin area. This thesis reports on the site, its excavation and its artifacts.

The purpose of this thesis is to study the relationship between educational attitudes and certain background features of Native Americans, in particular, where they were raised and what type of school they attended. The sample used consisted of 120 completed mail out-mail back surveys that were used primarily as a Needs Assessment for the Portland Indian Health clinic. The sample was randomly selected from the Portland Indian Health Clinic client/patient mailing list. The findings of this thesis indicate that the attitudes of Native Americans toward education in general are positive. The findings also indicate that older Native Americans who experienced being sent to a B.I.A. boarding school off the reservation have the least positive attitudes towards Indian Education programs. Implications and recommendation for further research are discussed.

Excavations conducted at Indian Sands (35-CU-67C), located along Oregon's southern coast, during 2002 and 2003 identified two discreet, artifact-bearing stratigraphic units. The uppermost unit is a deflated surface containing burnt shell and lithic artifacts associated with early Holocene ¹⁴C dates, while the underlying unit contained only lithic tools and debitage, some of which were associated with a ¹⁴C date of 10,430 ± 150 RCYBP. The late Pleistocene lithic assemblage at 35-CU-67C provides the earliest evidence for human presence on the Oregon coast to date. Analysis performed on the late Pleistocene assemblage addresses the validity of existing hypotheses regarding the nature of early Oregon coastal hunter-gatherer technological and subsistence strategies. These hypotheses are focused on whether early populations on the Oregon coast practiced a generalist-forager or collector subsistence strategy. Using theoretical approaches that deal with the organization of hunter-gatherer technology, analyses were conducted on the lithic tool and debitage assemblages at 35-CU- 67C in order to infer past hunter-gatherer behavior. Through the implementation of multiple tool and debitage analysis methodologies, issues of hunter-gatherer mobility, raw material procurement, stages of lithic reduction, tool production, and site function are presented. The data generated by the late Pleistocene lithic assemblage at 35-CU-67C are compared with the overlying surficial assemblage, additional early sites along the North American Pacific coast, and to contemporaneous sites located further inland within the Pacific Northwest region. Results of the lithic analyses at 35-CU-67C show distinct similarities in debitage trends between the assemblages of each stratigraphic unit. However, when tool assemblages from these units are compared, discrepancies in the types and amount of tools are found. Reasons for intra-site variability and similarity are explained through raw material studies and site function at 35-CU-67C. Additionally, similarities between the early tool assemblage at 35-CU-67C and those found in early tool assemblages on the extended Pacific coast and interior Pacific Northwest regions are discussed. This thesis demonstrates that early southern Oregon coastal populations had a tendency towards high mobility and used a generalized toolkit organization. Early lithic technology used at 35-CU-67C emphasized multidirectional core technology and biface manufacture in the form of preforms and leaf-shaped projectile-points. This type of technological organization is to be expected from hunter-gatherers practicing a generalist-forager subsistence strategy. Based on the 10,430 ± 150 RCYBP date and technological organization at 35-CU-67C, early Oregon coastal occupation is seen as encompassing a generalist-forager subsistence strategy most likely adapted to both coastal and terrestrial environments. / Graduation date: 2005

Located on the central Oregon coast, the Umpqua Eden site (35D083) yielded an artifact assemblage which is one of the five largest assemblages from the Oregon coast. The first aspect of the site that I looked at is the people who lived at the site, the ancestors of the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw. In turn, I consulted with Patty Whereat, the Cultural Resources Director for the tribes, which resulted in a more holistic view of the site. Additionally, I attempted to uncover possible women's and men's activity areas of the Umpqua Eden site. A wealth of information on the native peoples of the Oregon coast was discovered, revealing that the sexual division of labor was not extremely rigid before Euro-American contact and the social category of "female" was expanded to more than two genders with consideration given to the two-spirited individual. I also attempted to engender the archaeological record by looking at the processes involved in the manufacture of smoking pipes and the cultivation of tobacco. During the ethnographic period, women were not smoking pipes; however, they were probably cultivating the tobacco and possibly gathering the clay for smoking pipes. I suggest that there was an agricultural element to the hunter-gatherer native populations of the central Oregon coast and challenge Western assumptions of individualism in precontact groups of the Oregon coast. I also provide a comparative analysis of clay, schist and steatite pipes of the Oregon coast. The smoking pipes are all straight and tubular (9% are shouldered) and the Umpqua Eden site pipes have the most artistic motifs. My analysis shows that the sandstone pipe dates to approximately 2,000 years ago and the clay smoking pipe may have replaced the sandstone pipe. Schist and steatite pipes were also used by the people of the Oregon coast and may have possibly been traded into the site from southern groups. Microscopic analysis of the pipes provided evidence that people were firing their clay pipes in a low temperature reducing atmosphere and using sand temper. In addition, I found a wide range of pipes being used on the Oregon coast given its relatively small geographic location. All of the this archaeological inquiry has helped in understanding the Umpqua Eden site and helped to give us a clearer picture of pre-contact Lower Umpqua life. / Graduation date: 2000

The portion of the Oregon coast extending from Cape Blanco south into California has long been recognized as a distinct physiographic region, with probable ramifications for prehistoric subsistence and settlement patterns. Several researchers have proposed models outlining a greater reliance upon marine/littoral resources among groups within this region, while more northerly groups exhibited a higher reliance upon estuarine resources. Current knowledge about regional prehistoric subsistence practices, based upon the archaeological record and ethnographic sources, was correlated with the distribution and relative abundance of exploited and potentially exploitable marine species. These data suggest that the abundant coastal rocks and islands found along this section of the Oregon coast serve to concentrate diverse and abundant animal resources within a confined area, allowing for ease of exploitation. Therefore, the rocks and islands were of potential economic importance to aboriginal groups. To support this hypothesis archaeological subsurface testing was undertaken on the only previously recorded offshore island site, and an archaeological sample survey was conducted on additional rocks and islands along this section of coastline to determine their utilization by native peoples. Two additional prehistoric sites were recorded. The results of these investigations are herein presented, and directions for future research are discussed. / Graduation date: 1991

The purpose of this study is to examine what the elderly of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs reported as their health and social service needs in the Tribal Health and Social Service Needs Assessment. It will also review the elderly's concerns and those of the general population in regards to future planning of services for the elders.