June 17, 1997 Contact Pauline Austin (541) 346-3129 EUGENE--Elders from six Indian tribes came together on the University of Oregon campus this spring in a historic gift-giving ceremony that has already begun to renew old alliances in a struggle to redress old wrongs. The documents were unearthed at the Smithsonian Institution and in the National Archives through a cooperative venture between the Coquille Indian Tribe, the UO and the Smithsonian Institution. The Coquille Indian Tribe hosted the first potlatch and largest representative gathering of the coastal tribes held in more than 150 years on the University of Oregon campus. They used the traditional gift-giving ceremony to share copies of more than 60,000 forgotten government papers that document the first encounters between West Coast Indians and whites. Coquille Tribal Chairman Ed Metcalf presented leaders of the six tribes attending the potlatch with copies of the Southwestern Oregon Research Project collection, which documents their shared history. Council members, elders and family representatives from the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw; the Cow Creek Band of Umpquas; the Confederated Tribes of Siletz; the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde; and the Tolowa Tribe also attended the potlatch. Several years ago, Coquille Indian George Wasson, a UO doctoral degree student in anthropology, conceived the Southwestern Oregon Research Project (SWORP), which successfully unearthed the papers. Wasson had hoped to find confirmation of an oral tribal history that was at odds with the written history of the tribes' first meetings with whites. The project gave young adult Indians personal training and hands-on experience in the process of researching their lost or hidden tribal culture and history. "This program gave the UO a tremendous opportunity to add to Oregon history. The invitation to examine materials at the Smithsonian was an unparalleled opportunity for UO graduate students to get first-hand experience in the nation's archives," says Steadman Upham, UO vice provost for research and dean of the UO Graduate School. The Southwestern Oregon Research Project gave Wasson, his niece Denni Mitchell, Jason Younker and Shirod Younker--all UO students and members of the Coquille Tribe--broad access to the Smithsonian and the National Archives to search for their past. SWORP researchers examined government records, maps, treaties, letters and diaries of both ordinary soldiers and government agents. They found a chilling confirmation of tribal stories about the brutal treatment of Indians by white miners and other early settlers on the Oregon Coast. "The history books have not told the true story of the devastating impacts of white settlement on the Oregon Coast tribes," says Jon Erlandson, a UO professor of anthropology who worked with the students. Wasson wants to use the documents to correct the very different accounts that appear in history books and on historic markers in Oregon. The first step was to donate the material to the UO's Knight Library where the information will be available to scholars and historians. Besides correcting the historical record, Wasson and his colleagues also expect the recent potlatch at which the lost records were shared will encourage better cooperation among the tribes in the future. "We've had to struggle for 150 years for ourselves," explains Younker, a doctoral degree student in anthropology. "We were used to interacting and helping each other prior to white contact. After that we had to fight as individual tribes for federal recognition and lost the habit of cooperation." The potlatch, Wasson hopes, also will serve as a first step in smoothing old tribal animosities. He views the gathering in May on the UO campus as a beginning step in the development of a coastal tribe coalition that will collaborate on a wide variety of issues. The recovered records show, for example, that Oregon history is misstated on many state parks signs. Wasson says tribal cooperation is already producing some changes: A sign at Port Orford, a city which has long been known for a skirmish at Battle Rock, is being changed from a narrative of heroic white settlers withstanding a vicious Indian attack to a more accurate, historically documented version. The Southwestern Oregon Research Project uncovered more material than anyone expected, but participants agree that it only scratched the surface of what still lies hidden in the boxes and microfilm at the National Archives and the Smithsonian Institution. Researchers believe there is much more material about what happened after the federal government forced the tribes onto a reservation at Yachats in the mid 1880s. "The original project didn't touch the reservation years. The university is very open to extending SWORP to document that important period in Northwest history," says Upham. -30- #F-6083/Local,OrDailies,PDX,Native American Media,Special