From oral history to written word, learn about the history of Oregon through the stories of the Indigenous peoples of the Willamette Valley.
The Willamette Valley is rich with history--its riverbanks, forests, and mountains home to the tribes of Kalapuya, Chinook, Molalla, and more for thousands of years. This history has been largely unrecorded, incomplete, poorly researched, or partially told. In these stories, enriched by photographs and maps, Oregon Indigenous historian David G. Lewis combines years of researching historical documents and collecting oral stories, highlighting Native perspectives about the history of the Willamette Valley as they experienced it.
The timeline spans the first years of contact between settlers and tribes, the takeover of tribal lands and creation of reservations by the US Federal Government, and the assimilation efforts of boarding schools. Lewis shows the resiliency of Native peoples in the face of colonization.
Undoing the erasure of these stories reveals the fuller picture of the colonization and changes experienced by the Native peoples of the Willamette Valley absent from other contemporary histories of Oregon.
David G. Lewis, PhD, and member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, is a recognized researcher, scholar, writer and assistant professor of anthropology and Indigenous studies at Oregon State University. His publications include "Willamette Valley Treaties," "A History of Native Peoples of the Eugene, Cascades & Coast Region," and others. For more than twenty years, Lewis has been passionate about studying the original histories of the people of Oregon and California and has an extensive record of collaborative projects with regional scholars, tribes, local governments, and communities. Lewis's research specializes in the history of Kalapuyans and other Western Oregon tribes, which he explores through journal essays and on his blog The Quartux Journal. He currently resides in Chemeketa, now Salem, Oregon, with his wife, Donna, and two sons, Saghaley and Inatye.
Review Quotes:
"The full history of those who have lived in the Willamette Valley since time immemorial is one that needs to be told, and David Lewis is exactly the right person to tell it. One of the preeminent scholars and writers of the history of Oregon's Indigenous people, David's 'Tribal Histories of the Willamette Valley' brings to light a heretofore largely untold story of courage and resilience. It should be required reading for all who want to understand the true history of Oregon."
-- Kerry Tymchuk, Boyle Family Executive Director of the Oregon Historical Society
"David G. Lewis's Tribal Histories of the Willamette Valley makes a significant contribution toward redressing the neglected history of the Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest. Drawing on his rigorous scholarly research into the Native stories of colonization beginning with the first encounters with settlers, Lewis offers a crucial supplement to the stock histories of the region. This is a valuable book--the kind we've been waiting for."
-- Scott F. Parker, author of A Way Home: Oregon Essays
"This well-researched book exposes the astonishing injustice of the European settlers taking away by force and stealth not just the land of the Native Americans but their very identity. David G. Lewis concentrated his research on the Indigenous tribes of Western Oregon, but it's a reflection of similar injustices done all over the North American continent. Moreover, this book goes beyond just delivering historical facts. It's the powerful voice of the people whose voices were ignored for way too long."
-- Mark Budman, editor of Short, Vigorous Roots
"David G. Lewis (Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde) brings his experiences and academic training together in an exploration of Indian history in the Willamette Valley in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He presents conventional historical materials, often in complete passages, and recent interviews with tribal members, and intersperses them with his own interpretations and anecdotes. The result is a locally-connected, personalized history of the land and people. Instead of a single, linear chronology, his coverage circles back to earlier points as it discusses different topics and Indian experiences from the early 1800s to the recent resurgence of Indian empowerment and tribal restoration during which Lewis developed his sense of being Native to the Willamette Valley."
-- Gray H. Waley, author of Oregon and the Collapse of Illahee
"The Willamette Valley doesn't look the same after reading David G. Lewis's work. Tribal Histories of the Willamette Valley is a critical, sobering account of the lives of Native peoples of Western Oregon, from first encounters with white Americans to removals and assimilation efforts. Through meticulous research and powerful personal anecdotes, Lewis details truths that the U.S. government, white historians, anthropologists, settlers and their descendants have ignored. His work is a call to confront this painful history that shaped the Willamette Valley into the place we know today, a history that white Oregonians must acknowledge--and work to rectify."
-- Josephine Woolington, author of Where We Call Home
