Praying for Oregon Counties: Lincoln
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| Lincoln City, Oregon |
As you travel south down the Oregon coast, Lincoln County is next in line after Tillamook. It was created from western sections of Benton and Polk Counties, but later than Tillamook - not until 1893. Named after Abraham Lincoln, the county seat for many years was Toledo. In 1954, however, it lost the election to Newport which has been the county seat since.
Both Newport and Lincoln City are popular places to vacation, with the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, and museums, shopping and seafood in both towns. While my coast trips as a child centered around Tillamook and Pacific City, as an adult I have gravitated more toward Lincoln City and Newport. We have often visited there either on family trips or with friends.
In 2017 my daughter and I went to Lincoln City and on one of our excursions visited Toledo, just a few miles away and the former county seat. We stopped at a little museum there and discovered that the movie, Sometimes A Great Notion, based on the novel by Ken Kesey about an Oregon logging family, had been filmed in Toledo (and elsewhere in Lincoln County). That fact was still celebrated even though the movie was made in the summer of 1970.
Both Lincoln and Tillamook had a problem with being isolated from the rest of the state until the early twentieth century. The rough mountain roads made shipping products such as dairy, seafood and lumber, challenging. Tillamook County, for example, built a ship, the Morning Star, in 1894 to get their dairy products to market before they could spoil. This whole section of the coast was made more accessible in 1925 when north-south Highway 101 was completed. During the 1930’s and the Great Depression, government-sponsored projects resulted in a number of bridges in Lincoln County that replaced ferries and made travel faster. The Salmon River highway, OR 18, was built in 1930 creating a better route over the coast range to Portland and the Willamette Valley.
While on our 2017 trip to Lincoln City, my daughter and I stopped for dinner at the Chinook Winds Casino. This is a Native American casino, hotel, and convention center owned by the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz.
The reservation lands of the Siletz, originally called the Coast Indian Reservation, was created by executive order of President Franklin Pierce on November 9, 1855, containing 1.1 million acres. Peoples from approximately 27 different tribes, speaking 11 different languages were assigned to this area. Within twenty years, the original treaty had been broken and the reservation reduced by about two-thirds. That land was then divided into 160 acre sections with the tribe members taking ownership of sections. However, this resulted in unclaimed lands being sold to non-natives and much of the remaining reservation passed into outside ownership. In 1956 the federal government terminated the tribe, a move meant to give the Native Americans independence, but in practice had numerous negative consequences including the removal of financial support for services such as police, fire protection, health services and education as well as the termination of tribal identity and structure.
A few years later the Siletz began petitioning Congress to reverse the termination. With the support of Oregon Senators Packwood and Hatfield the tribe’s sovereignty was restored in 1977.
Now the tribe owns several thousand acres of their reservation lands and has developed the Chinook Winds Casino as well as owning several other properties and businesses.
The history of the treatment of the Native Americans in Oregon is sometimes difficult to untangle and deserves far more space than is possible here.
When I first read that so many tribes were moved together to the Coast Indian Reservation, it seemed a callous move given the vast differences in culture, language, and even diet between the various tribes, but in line with the policy of assimilating the tribes rather than preserving their culture and identity. However, further digging reveals a more complex situation.
Joel Palmer was one of the good guys in Oregon history. Among other offices held during Oregon’s formative years, he was Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Oregon Territory from 1853-56. During that time he negotiated many of the treaties with the tribes, including the one that led to creation of the Coast Indian Reservation in 1855.
The treaties that were signed with the Northwest Native Americans in the 1850’s followed a similar pattern. The tribes, seeing their lands were overrun and that they were outnumbered, agreed to cede most of their lands in an area, “reserving” a portion for their own permanent use. Before the treaty-signing period was over, however, the policy had shifted to consolidating most tribes on a few larger reservations.
Why?
Part (only part!) of the answer goes back to the California Gold Rush of 1849. The mostly (94%) male surge of immigrants had a reputation for being immoral and lawless, at least once they reached the wilds of California. The miners' attitude toward the indigenous populations, abetted by government and military leaders, was one of the most brutal in US history, with the Native American population in Northern California dropping from around 150,000 in 1848 to 30,000 by 1870.
Gold was found in southern Oregon in the 1850s and this same attitude appears to have been among those miners and early settlers as well. Joel Palmer was known for insisting the “hostilities” between the miners/settlers and the natives were perpetrated by the whites, not the natives. He was dismissed as Superintendent in 1856 for his views. While he was Superintendent, he stopped trying to establish a reservation at Table Rock in southern Oregon when he realized the miners in the Rogue River area would never leave the tribes in peace until they had exterminated them. He opted to move all the tribes in that area to the Coast Reservation and Grand Ronde to keep the tribes away from mining settlements and the threat of genocide.
In 1871 Palmer took the position as Agent on the Siletz Reservation but resigned after a short while when he felt politics prevented him from actually helping the Siletz. We are not sure how he felt about his efforts at the end of his life, but he seems to have been held in esteem by the tribes themselves. You can read more from the Siletz point of view here.
How to pray for Lincoln County?
Like Daniel, repent for the sins of our fathers, especially regarding the treatment of the Native Americans.
O Lord, according to all Your righteousness, I pray, let Your anger and Your fury be turned away from Your city Jerusalem, Your holy mountain; because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and Your people are a reproach to all those around us. Daniel 9:16
There is a three person Board of Commissioners in Lincoln County, currently Kaety Jacobson, Doug Hunt (Chair) and Claire Hall.
Margaret
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