The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians recently purchased roughly 2,000 acres of land near the Table Rocks preserve north of Medford. The property is part of the ancestral homeland of several tribes that were forced out of the Rogue Valley in the mid-1850s. The tribes were relocated to the newly-created Siletz reservation on the coast, forcing them to adapt to an unfamiliar climate and way of life. The tribe plans to use the Table Rocks property for conservation and the cultivation of first foods going forward.
Robert Kentta serves on the Siletz Tribal Council. He joins us to share more about the cultural, spiritual and historical significance of the site.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians recently purchased more than 2,000 acres of land near the Table Rocks preserve north of Medford. The property is part of the ancestral homeland of several tribes that were forced out of the Rogue Valley in the mid-1850s. The tribes were relocated to the Siletz Reservation on the coast. But they now, once again, own a large piece of land that’s so central to their history and culture.
Robert Kentta serves on the Siletz Tribal Council. He joins me now. Welcome to Think Out Loud.
Robert Kentta: Thanks for having me.
Miller: Can you first just describe the land that the Siletz Tribe was able to purchase?
Kentta: Yeah, it’s on the west side of Lower Table Rocks in the Rogue Valley. It includes about 2,200 acres, a small bit of riverfront, and the rest is upland. It’s culturally important because of its history and tribal stories about it. But also because of the culturally important plants and rare and threatened species that occupy the property.
Miller: I want to hear about all of this, about the history and the culture. But before we get to that, my understanding is that many tribes that called this area home were forced off of this land. What Indigenous peoples had been there for generation after generation?
Kentta: The Takelma people, which are divided between Dagelma, the people along the river, and Latgawa, which are the kind of upriver and upland people. Shasta and Applegate River Athabaskan, known as Dakubetede today.
Miller: This site, as you noted, was historically important. Can you tell us about the Treaty of Table Rock that was signed in 1853?
Kentta: Yeah, it’s the first treaty signed in the American West, certainly west of the Rocky Mountains, that went through the whole process of being ratified by the U.S. Senate and proclaimed law by the President of the United States. And it was signed right on the borders of this purchase that we just made.
Miller: And what did it say?
Kentta: Oh, it described the Rogue Valley, basically the summit of the Cascade Siskiyous, the Rogue-Umpqua divide, and the Siskiyou divide on the southern border, and the mountains just west, I believe, of the mouth of Applegate River, as being the boundaries of the treaty session. And U.S. law has always recognized tribes’ rights to their land, their aboriginal title as it’s called. So the U.S. purchased aboriginal title in order for U.S. citizens to legally settle lands that the U.S. claimed.
Miller: And then some land was set aside by the U.S. government, where these groups could still live, where they did not cede their land?
Kentta: Yeah, set aside by the government is one way of putting it. Usually it’s called reserved lands, that’s why they’re called Indian Reservations. And so the area between Upper and Lower Table Rocks, bounded by the Rogue River itself, going downstream from Lower Table Rock to the mouth of Evans Creek, and then up Evans Creek to the meadows on the far upper end of Evans Creek, and then a line from those meadows to Upper Table Rocks was the boundary of the Table Rock Temporary Reservation. That was to be maintained for exclusive use until a permanent reservation was selected by the President of the United States. It’s [a] fairly unique treaty language, but it was the template language then for all the Western Oregon treaties that did become ratified.
Miller: But the groups that were known by the U.S. government as the Rogue River Tribe were only able to spend about another year or so on that land. What happened?
Kentta: Well, initially, U.S. law was extended to Oregon Territory when it was established in 1848. And that extended what was called the Utmost Good Faith Law to Oregon Territory, which meant that the tribes were to remain uninvaded, undisturbed, until the U.S. government selected properties for purchase and actually made purchase. And then the U.S. could start doling out those lands through its laws.
And what happened before any treaties were even signed in the American West was the territory got established in 1848. Then in 1850, Congress passed the Oregon Donation Land Act, which promised a man and his wife arriving as U.S. citizens in Oregon territory could claim a square mile, 640 acres of land, that tribes had not ceded yet. So it created lots of conflict. Then gold being discovered in Northern California and Southern Oregon, right about the same time, also created lots of opportunity for conflict.
Miller: Can you tell us about the serious conflict that happened after the treaty was signed?
Kentta: There was continuing aggravations, killings, insults and misunderstandings because of language barriers, total cultural misunderstandings. And in October of 1855, a group of settlers from the Rogue Valley attacked a camp of our people at the mouth of Little Butte Creek and killed somewhere around 25, 27 of our people there. And it was mostly women, children and older people that were in the camp. And that just demonstrated to our folks that the non-Indian settlers were pretty focused on getting rid of us.
It was in the Oregon newspapers at the time, advocating for the extermination of all Indians. So that attack in October of 1855 just demonstrated to us that that was the intent of the majority of the population. But we did have some supporters among the non-Indian settlers. John Beeson is a famous one of those who actually wrote a book called “A Plea for the Indians” that was published in 1858.
Miller: And my understanding is, as a result of that attack and a war that followed, the Native tribes that had been in that area, north of what we now call Medford, for since time immemorial, were forced to a reservation on the coast. How different are the ecosystems around Table Rocks and the coast?
Kentta: Very different. The Rogue Valley is much drier and warmer, especially in the summertime, sometimes gets a bit more cold weather and snow. But, we’re in a wet climate here in what became the Siletz Reservation. We don’t have oak natively growing here in the original reservation area and acorns were a primary food source for our people, so we had to get used to a whole different climate, a whole different ecosystem with different kinds of foods. And it was a big hardship on our people.
Miller: What you’re talking about there is both very practical considerations of the traditions of life, of feeding yourself, of not being practicable in a new home. But what about cultural or spiritual questions of being forced away from a homeland? What kinds of stories have been passed down about that?
Kentta: My great grandfather, he’s just a boy about 7 or 8 years old when he was brought to the reservation in the 1850s. His parents had both been killed in the last parts of the Rogue River Wars, so he was an orphan boy. He had to spend the last winter in the Rogue Valley with his grandmother, who most of that time couldn’t even walk anymore. And although he had been a partly grown boy and fairly strong when they started their hideout, by springtime, he couldn’t walk anymore either and had to crawl to things that she pointed at with her walking stick. [She] told him to dig them up or go rob an acorn granary tree from the acorn woodpeckers. So they spent that last winter pretty well starving.
Miller: Do you have personal memories of visiting this land, the Table Rocks?
Kentta: Yeah, when I was a partly grown boy, my mother and her next younger sister rounded us kids up and loaded us in a car a couple of different summers and took us to the Applegate River Valley, where our great grandfather was born. Toured Jacksonville, the historic town site and the cemetery, and just went all through the Rogue Valley. The pointing out of Table Rocks was kind of prominent in those visits.
And then as I became an adult myself, [I] had camping trips to the Rogue Valley, Applegate Valley area. And in my work, I worked almost 30 years as cultural resources director for our tribes, did lots of archaeology, cultural resource protection consultations and projects there in the Rogue Valley. So it’s always felt like a second home to me. And when I drive, especially coming over from Grants Pass to Central Point, Medford area, and you first get those views of Table Rocks and Mt. McLoughlin and in the distance, it’s a special feeling returning home.
Miller: Does it feel different now that the tribe was able to actually purchase a part of this land that’s always felt like home, but as far as U.S. law was concerned, you didn’t have any legal tie to?
Kentta: Yeah. We didn’t hold legal title to anything, but we still had, as ceded lands, there’s the federal responsibility of trust relationship to tribes. So our treaty connections to those lands remained intact. Having purchased land and now hold that title, it’s again another special feeling of once again regaining a homeland within our homelands that we can call our own.
Miller: How did this sale come about? I mean, what did happen to the privately held lands over the last 170 years?
Kentta: I don’t know the full chain of custody of this property. But more recently, I think it was the early 2000s, there were plans for a big destination golf resort on the property. And I believe it was the 2008 economic crash or decline that we experienced that sort of shelved those plans. Then in the meantime, I think a lot more awareness of the unique biological, botanical resources of the property became known.
The Nature Conservancy purchased a conservation easement within a portion of the property because of the rare and sensitive plant communities there that they wanted to protect. And we’ve had lots of coordination with the Bureau of Land Management over this Table Rock special interest area, and the Nature Conservancy, and have participated in restoration and enhancement projects. I’ve done historical interpretation talks at Lower Table Rocks trailhead parking lot and then led hikes up to the overlook of the valley, pointing out plants along the way and just discussing the history.
Miller: In the context of the Land Back Movement, what does it mean to you that the tribe had to buy this land rather than simply having it returned by the landowner?
Kentta: Well, anybody who owns land, if they have cleared a title to it, has the right to do what they want under the law, and planning, guidelines and all of those things. Land Back, more in the strict sense, is around a reconciliation of the history and a return of land in recognition, settlement or compensation of some of those wrongs that happened in the past. That wasn’t this situation, but we do appreciate that the landowner, Mr. Kong, was willing to work with us and we were able to regain title to this. Even though it’s through purchase, it’s a significant acquisition for us for cultural and historical purposes.
Miller: Going forward, what do you hope to do with or at this site?
Kentta: Well, every year, most years anyway, we have had an event called “Run to the Road” that leaves the Siletz community here, right at the old Siletz Agency headquarters, for the reservation, goes down to 101 at Newport and follows the route south along the coast on 101. [It] then turns up the Rogue River and terminates at a place near Agnes, where our people decided to give up resisting removal to the reservation and come to the Siletz Reservation.
We used to have that event in September as part of our Treaty Days celebration, and because so many wildfires had kind of blocked us from holding those events in recent years, we had switched the date to be in late May. And so this year, in recognition of this purchase, we’re switching the location of the event to the Rogue Valley and we’ll probably be based at a nearby state park. Then taking trips, especially elders and youth, out to the property itself.
Miller: What memories do you hope that those younger members will come to develop from this land?
Kentta: All of this cultural education, language retention and restoration, and events like this that give our younger folks and even our elders a chance to reconnect with these ancestral places of importance, all of that is what is needed to maintain and then carry out into the future our unique identity as Siletz tribal peoples, confederation of many tribes. We have 10 completely different languages represented within our confederation from throughout Western Oregon. So we’re very culturally diverse and we try to reinforce and maintain those connections for all of our ancestral people.
Miller: Robert Kentta, thanks very much.
Kentta: Thank you.
Miller: Robert Kentta serves on the Siletz Tribal Council.
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