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• 1. [Article] Indians and Criminal Justice in Early Oregon, 1842-1859

  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 ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Indians and Criminal Justice in Early Oregon, 1842-1859 Author: Ferrell, John Samuel Year: 1973 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. Title: Indians and Criminal Justice in Early Oregon, 1842-1859 Author: Ferrell, John Samuel Year: 1973 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. Close

• 2. [Article] French-Indian Relations (1672-1701) : An Economic, Political and Military Study

  This paper concentrates on the political, economic, and military policies of New France (French Canada) towards the Indian tribes inhabiting and bordering New France during the period 1672-1701. It was ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: French-Indian Relations (1672-1701) : An Economic, Political and Military Study Author: Biggs, James Duncan Year: 1973 This paper concentrates on the political, economic, and military policies of New France (French Canada) towards the Indian tribes inhabiting and bordering New France during the period 1672-1701. It was a period of intensive exploration coupled with the fur trade, principally beaver, both of which activities spurred France to compel its “province” of New France to make alliances with the Indians and to block penetration of the French-claimed area by the English colonists to the south (New York and New England) and to the north (Hudson’s Bay area). Any research must be concerned with many interacting and conflicting factors: the policies of the French and English monarchs combined with the personalities and interests of the governors and officials in their colonies. The involvement of merchants and coureurs de bois often conflicted with the civil authorities, the various Catholic orders (Often in conflict with each other), and with the English colonies. In the midst of these conflicts were the Indian tribes with their shifting interests and alliances among themselves and the European traders and missionaries intruding into their territories. The research had several problems that seemed almost insurmountable. The first was the anti-Indian bias exhibited by nearly all writers. Added to this difficulty was the fact of scholars taking sides according to their nationality, American, English, or French. With the exception of The Fur Trade in Canada by Harold Innis, originally published in 1930, there was not a good general account of the French fur trade. There seemed to be misleading information, even inaccuracies, in the location of French forts in modern maps of this period. The sequence of events had to be ferreted out and combined in a cohesive manner from many sources. The first term of Governor Frontenac (1672-82) had conflicting and fragmentary records, while most of his second term was adequately researched; however, there was not a single adequate account of King William’s War during Frontenac’s second term of office. The missionaries left adequate records (i.e., the Jesuits), but they looked upon the Indians solely for conversion to their form of Roman Catholicism and, at the same time, blackened the Iroquois (New France’s main Indian enemy) and the “illegal” coureurs de bois (French traders to the Indians). The latter opened vast areas of beaver trade territory with “new” Indian customers and, because of high monopoly prices, would trade with New France’s main trade enemy, the town of Albany in “English” New York. The major consensuses by historians are that Governor La Barre (1682-85) was incompetent and that Louis XIV neglected New France from 1674 to 1689. Information was obtained from the university libraries of Reed College and Portland State University, at the Multnomah County Library, and at the Oregon Historical Society Library. The last is valuable for primary sources and for scholarly articles concerning this period. The outcome of this research shows that the French expansion into the Great Lakes and Mississippi Valley regions changed the Indians’ lives during this period. The hostile Iroquois were neutralized from warfare against New France in case England and France went to war again, as the Indians’ culture became completely dependent on trade goods in a little over one generation. The horse-riding Sioux armed with guns nearly exterminated the Miamis, while the Fox and Mascoutin tribes defected from the French shortly after this period was concluded. Higher prices in trade goods that increased dependence, the increases in tribal warfare among tribes, and their loss of initiative and manual skills all deprived the Indians of real power. Title: French-Indian Relations (1672-1701) : An Economic, Political and Military Study Author: Biggs, James Duncan Year: 1973 This paper concentrates on the political, economic, and military policies of New France (French Canada) towards the Indian tribes inhabiting and bordering New France during the period 1672-1701. It was a period of intensive exploration coupled with the fur trade, principally beaver, both of which activities spurred France to compel its “province” of New France to make alliances with the Indians and to block penetration of the French-claimed area by the English colonists to the south (New York and New England) and to the north (Hudson’s Bay area). Any research must be concerned with many interacting and conflicting factors: the policies of the French and English monarchs combined with the personalities and interests of the governors and officials in their colonies. The involvement of merchants and coureurs de bois often conflicted with the civil authorities, the various Catholic orders (Often in conflict with each other), and with the English colonies. In the midst of these conflicts were the Indian tribes with their shifting interests and alliances among themselves and the European traders and missionaries intruding into their territories. The research had several problems that seemed almost insurmountable. The first was the anti-Indian bias exhibited by nearly all writers. Added to this difficulty was the fact of scholars taking sides according to their nationality, American, English, or French. With the exception of The Fur Trade in Canada by Harold Innis, originally published in 1930, there was not a good general account of the French fur trade. There seemed to be misleading information, even inaccuracies, in the location of French forts in modern maps of this period. The sequence of events had to be ferreted out and combined in a cohesive manner from many sources. The first term of Governor Frontenac (1672-82) had conflicting and fragmentary records, while most of his second term was adequately researched; however, there was not a single adequate account of King William’s War during Frontenac’s second term of office. The missionaries left adequate records (i.e., the Jesuits), but they looked upon the Indians solely for conversion to their form of Roman Catholicism and, at the same time, blackened the Iroquois (New France’s main Indian enemy) and the “illegal” coureurs de bois (French traders to the Indians). The latter opened vast areas of beaver trade territory with “new” Indian customers and, because of high monopoly prices, would trade with New France’s main trade enemy, the town of Albany in “English” New York. The major consensuses by historians are that Governor La Barre (1682-85) was incompetent and that Louis XIV neglected New France from 1674 to 1689. Information was obtained from the university libraries of Reed College and Portland State University, at the Multnomah County Library, and at the Oregon Historical Society Library. The last is valuable for primary sources and for scholarly articles concerning this period. The outcome of this research shows that the French expansion into the Great Lakes and Mississippi Valley regions changed the Indians’ lives during this period. The hostile Iroquois were neutralized from warfare against New France in case England and France went to war again, as the Indians’ culture became completely dependent on trade goods in a little over one generation. The horse-riding Sioux armed with guns nearly exterminated the Miamis, while the Fox and Mascoutin tribes defected from the French shortly after this period was concluded. Higher prices in trade goods that increased dependence, the increases in tribal warfare among tribes, and their loss of initiative and manual skills all deprived the Indians of real power. Close