History Theses and Dissertations

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They "Look with Longing Eyes": Pre-Allotment Strategies on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, 1880-1885
(University of Oregon, 2022-10-26) Brown , Madelyn; Weisiger, Marsha
Before the ratification of a national allotment policy in 1887, the US Office of Indian Affairs used assimilation policies to prepare individual reservations for privatization. Situated within the larger themes of US colonialism and nineteenth-century Indigenous landownership, this microhistory examines assimilatory methods and their impact on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation from 1880 to 1885. During this period, the reservation became a space of conflict as government ideologies clashed with Indigenous and settler realities. In their attempt to prove the reservation was prepared for allotment, Indian agents only increased the Confederated Tribes vulnerability to settler interests through a faulty education system; cash-crop agriculture that promoted settler immigration; and the diminishment of a viable economic resource: pastoralism. With Indigenous allottees, white farmers, and white ranchers vying for available land, these assimilation policies did little to prevent settler greed—and extreme land loss—during the Confederated Tribes allotment era.