The Years 1893-1912

As soon as the 1892 agreement was signed, an effort to split the western part of Benton County off, to form a new county, went into overdrive. The result of that effort was that within 4 months, Lincoln County was established. Ever since non-Indians had moved into the...

The 1892 “Surplus Lands” “Agreement”

As stated in the last article, allotment was both boon and bane to our people for various reasons. Federal policy was directed at de-Indian-izing our people. The allotment policy was an important part of that process, because it meant the breaking up of communal...

The Siletz Allotments in 1891-1892

Some of the treaties of our Siletz people mentioned that parcels of land (allotments) could be assigned to individual tribal members, and there was some early, informal allotting of lands to tribal members here at Siletz. George Harney, Henry Davenport, Alex Ross and...

Executive Order, December 21, 1865

Concentrating on one particular action of the government towards our people and trying to adequately describe it is daunting. Part of the problem is that these snippets of history do not stand alone in time and context. All these situations relate to each other, not...

The Early Days on the Siletz Reservation

All our families have stories about things that happened during the removal to the reservation and/or events in the early days of the Siletz Reservation. It was an unpleasant time for everybody involved, marked by starvation, disease, violence, poverty and depression...