My current work-in-progress is set during the Civil War in Oregon. The Civil War was a factor in Oregon politics, but of more pressing concern to many of the citizens of Oregon were conflicts between whites and Native Americans.
As emigrants to Oregon moved from the Willamette Valley into other parts of the state, conflicts with the indigenous peoples increased. The discovery of gold in the Rogue River Valley led to the Rogue River Wars of 1855-56. In the early 1860s, more gold was discovered in Oregon and what is now Idaho, which increased tensions between miners and Native Americans.
The primary tribes in Southern Oregon were the Klamaths, the Modocs, the Paiutes, and the Snakes. Theodore Stern wrote a detailed article describing the history of the dealings between the Klamath tribes and the white settlers and miners. See Stern, “The Klamath Indians and the Treaty of 1864,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 57, no. 3 (1956).
The hostilities between whites amd these Native American tribes led Lt. Col. Charles S. Drew to advocate for the construction of a fort in the area. (Drew will be a character in my current work-in-progress.) Following Drew’s recommendation, Fort Klamath was built in 1863 to protect immigrant wagon trains and miners in that region. Drew wrote in a report to his superiors, later incorporated into a massive report on Indian affairs by the U.S. Department of Interior to Congress (p. 56 et seq), that
“The Indians of the Klamath Lake region . . . [are] justly denominated hostile. . . . [N]one of them are in the least reliable for any good whatever. On the contrary, . . . they are a horde of practical thieves, highwaymen, and murderers, cowardly, sycophants before the white man’s face, and perfidious assassins behind his back.”
By contrast, J. W. Perit Huntington, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Oregon, submitted comments to the Department of the Interior the following year that indicated the tribes near Klamath Lake were friendly. And acts of kindness did occur between the whites and Native Americans. For example, during the winter of 1863-64, soldiers at Fort Klamath provided food to the Klamath Indians in the region.
Despite his opinion of the local tribes’ character, Drew recommended that the U.S. government enter into treaties with certain of the tribes in the area. During 1864, there were efforts to secure a settlement between the Army and the Klamath Indians. Congress appropriated $20,000 (a large sum at the time) to negotiate a treaty that acquired Indian land in the region. It took until October 1864 to come to terms.
As Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Perit Huntington led the negotiations. Representing the tribes were members of the Klamath, Modoc, Paiute, and Snake, although not all the Native American bands were included in the negotiations. The treaty took about a week of talks to come to terms, as described in Stern’s article.
Lt. Col. Drew was on a reconnaissance mission through the Owyhee Basin in the summer and fall of 1864, but on September 22, he was called back to Fort Klamath to attend the treaty negotiations. He was as slow returning to Fort Klamath as he had been to leave earlier in the year, and he missed the negotiations. He arrived at Fort Klamath on October 15, 1864, the day the treaty was signed.
According to Hugh Bancroft, in his History of Oregon, Volume II (p. 506), Drew was “glad to find his services had not been required, and not sorry to have had nothing to do with the treaty there made: not because the treaty was not a good and just one, but from a fear that the government would fail to keep it.”
The 1864 treaty terms that Huntington negotiated included the Klamath tribes ceding more than 6 million acres to the U.S. government. The Klamath retained much of their ancestral territory, but the Modoc and Paiute lost much of theirs. The tribes retained hunting and fishing rights in perpetuity, but they agreed to move to the Klamath Indian Reservation.
Unfortunately, these terms led to continued tensions between whites and the Native Americans, resulting in the Modoc War of 1872-73. Leading to those wars, some Modoc Indians (one of the Klamath tribes), left the reservation and returned to their former territory. The U.S. Army defeated them and forcibly returned them to the Klamath Reservation.
Lt. Col. Drew’s involvement with the Native Americans in Southern Oregon will be an issue in my novel. I want him to be a mentor to my protagonist, but Drew was not always an admirable man. This presents challenges for my protagonist. What can he learn from Drew while he sifts through the opinions Drew holds with which he disagrees?
Writers of historical fiction, have you had to deal with contradictory aspects of a real person’s character in your novels?
