Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Vestiges of the Past: Rogue River War (1851--56)




Some recent pictures and older prints and photos of the conflict that engulfed soutrhern Oregon a century and a half ago and set the standard in many ways for further mistreatment of native Americans in the Pacific Northwest.

36 comments:

  1. lol @ the 60 marriageable ladies!

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  2. I guess the next change could be something like Deceased Native American Memorial Road lol.

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  3. Yes, I thought that was quite amusing,too . Interesting "selling point" for would-be male frontier farmers.

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  4. lol. When I first read in the newspaper that some county commissioners were recommending that slight change, I thought "Good grief, they've got to be kidding!"

    They weren't kidding.

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  5. Ah yes.... but there is a world of difference between marriageable and marry-able ladies I think.
    I guess it was worth a 1500 mile hike to check it out though, nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that. Nice print.

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  6. "Faint heart never won fair maiden" as they say. So true AA. Besides, it was boring I'll bet in 1855 USA and even calculating the odd chance of getting tomahawked or catching cholera, wouldn't it be worth the time and trouble to "check things out"?

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  7. Great statue, I like the small womb like figure and the evocative pose of the brave. Very impressive what is it made of?

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  8. Quaint building, if it weren't for the sign I'd never have guessed what it was, what sort of music is played at the Britt Festival Doug?

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  9. Thanks. The city workers are doing some very interesting stuff at this little civic park, trying to recreate some of the original trees and plants that were here when the native lived (i.e., chopping down the invasive emigrant flora like the huge blackberry bushes that dot the landscape in the Rogue Valley.) I'll post some other parts of the park in my next southern Oregon photo set.

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  10. Amazing really...imprisoned by 'visitors' for being born there like the generations that had preceded him. Sort of puts it into perspective to see that picture of that rather frail looking old man.

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  11. well he got to be 79 years old, fought for it and got it it seems. I really don't know how to view this in the context of the last picture? Interesting shot though.

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  12. Interesting that they are just called Father and Mother (Pioneers), but the name of the person who quarried the marble and the son's initials are on it, I presume their names are also on it somewhere?
    I would be interested to know what the views of the families in Europe were to these people, their relatives who went away and were possibly never heard of again. I wonder where Father and Mother's father and mother were born and lived their lives? It would be fascinating to know?

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  13. Railroads were so important to opening up North America, I doubt there would be a Canada today were it not for the Canadian Pacific Railroad, the engineering feats undertaken to unite a country were monumental and amazing.

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  14. I would prefer an address on Dead Indian Road to Dead Indian Memorial Road myself Doug, at least they didn't name it after who or whatever killed them, that would have been a bit insensitive I think.

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  15. To people forced off common land by the enclosures that accompanied the agrarian revolution in England in the mid to late 18th century and the forebears of this lost peasantry this must have looked like the promised land indeed. Utopia and cornucopia wrapped up in one.

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  16. Answer...everybody whose anybody it seems, Dr John, Taj Mahal, Average White Band, Buddy Guy an amazing bill over the festival, there's a lot I'd like to see and hear myself, very impressive lineup..amazing!

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  17. Exactly. When I go up to these hills for a walk, I sometimes try to imagine how the valley must have looked to the early settlers, many of whom as you said coming from the enclosed parts of England, Ireland, Germany, et al. It must have been overwhelming, because so many came across near-impassable mountains and arid high desert country in Nevada and far northern California..and then to see a valley like this!

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  18. It has really taken off just in the past decade, as have the prices for a ticket but that's another story. Not to be too much the civic pimp, but Ashland's Oregon Shakespeare Festival is huge, too, in terms of attendence in the Summer. There are usually four or five plays running, with everything from the old Will to Tom Stoppard and Arthur Miller, Rita Dove, August Wilson. Not the West End exactly, but still.

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  19. They were indeed, and as you probably know the big railroad tycoons of course wielded a great influence--not always benign--over Washington politics and the economy of the West. Too much to go into here. But,yes, the manpower demands and logistics behind spanning the continent in both countries was a huge undertaking, the dirty work in the USA done by recent emigrants, Chinese miners and regular workers from the Union Pacific eastward and Irish and other recent European immigrant nationalities from the Central Pacific westward.

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  20. lol. Does look a bit "refined" I'd say.

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  21. Yeah, he might have forgot to make sure the stonemason mentioned mom and dad!

    Yes, some letters turn up in the scholarly history books, but you can't visit a site like this and not wish there were more first-hand accounts of this frontier life, and those attitudes of ones left behind. The stones don't speak that much in most cases.

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  22. Exactly. This picture is not the best of Table Rocks, but it does show how imposing it was to the valley around it.

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  23. Alderwood, which I gather is from a type of ceder tree. The name of the 20-foot statue is "We Are Here" and was unveiled in downtown Ashland in 2006.

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  24. Yeah, we got the land, they got a historic marker. If that isn't a set-up for bad karma coming back on the inheritors of the ill-gotten land, then I'm a red-tailed monkey.

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  25. A red tailed monkey sounds a fine beast Doug, but I'm sure your not one so I take your point about Karma. However so many places have got so much Karma it seems to me that we're all in trouble on that front. oh heck!

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  26. I guess he wanted it to be known he got here early for a white dude and went at it with the locals.

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  27. "Killed by Indians": more of an indictment than an endearing epitaph.

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  28. A bit on the stark side for my taste. Just "Killed by Indians"? Didn't he have any hobbies?

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