The Cow Creek Umpqua Indians lived off the land along the north and south fork of the Umpqua River for many years before they encountered European settlers.
In the late 18th century Spanish ships began to investigate the northwest coast of North America. They were the first of many that began investigating the prospects of settling the northwest. In 1819, fur trappers from the North West Company encountered a group of Umpqua Indians and killed several Cow Creeks. Many settlers began inhabiting the territory.
The 1848 Organic Act established the Oregon Territory. Soon after, the Oregon Donation Land Act of 1850 gave away nearly 320 acres of the Oregon Territory to settlers over the age of 18 regardless of previous Native Americans’ claim to the land. In 1852 gold was discovered at Jackson Creek in the Umpqua Territory. This caused a large influx of miners and ignited tensions between the Cow Creeks and pioneers. Finally in 1853 the Cow Creeks and then chief Miwaleta, ratified an agreement with the US government in which they were paid $12,000 over the next two decades for their entire territory. The Cow Creeks were abandoned with no land holdings. This series of events had a terribly destructive effect on the Cow Creeks. Miwaleta died a short time after the agreement, and his successor committed the band to a bloody fight with white settlers to relinquish their territory. This Rogue River War annulled the US government’s involvement in the treaty. The Cow Creeks had no land and no source of income.
US government policy functioned to remove Umpqua and Rogue Indians from the region. Some were rounded up and forced to march over 150 miles north to the Grand Ronde Reservation. Those that escaped the round ups traveled to remote regions of their former territory. Approximately 800 Indians reached the reservation, and were forced to subsist in harsh conditions, often struggling with starvation.
By 1865 even reservation land fell to settlers. The General Allotment Act of 1887 broke up parts of reservations for white settlement.
Throughout much of the 20th century the Cow Creek Umpqua quietly survived on unwanted reservation lands. In 1918 elders formed an organization that attempted to regain tribal land, but strangely in 1954 public law stated there were no more Native American tribes left in western Oregon.
Finally after decades of persecution, in 1982 a Claims Court in Washington D.C. restored the Cow Creek Umpqua band to tribal status with the federal government through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The settlement allocated $1.5 million to the Cow Creeks (roughly the value of the territory that was taken from them in 1853).
