Umpqua Indian Development Corporation history

Trappers working for Hudson Bay Company made the first contact with the coastal tribes in 1820.

In 1824 Smallpox had entirely wiped out the Hanis Coos Indian village at Tenmile Lakes.

The first American fur trapper, Jedediah Smith, and his men followed in 1828.

In 1836 A measles outbreak struck Indian villages on the Coos Bay reducing the population from 2,000 to 800.

The Oregon Territory was established in 1848 through the Organic Act.

According to pioneer settler, George Riddle (1851), “The salmon in great numbers would pass up by the side of the trap and, failing to get above the dam would be carried back into the open end of the trap, and the weight of the water would hold them.”

In 1852 gold was discovered in Oregon on Jackson Creek, and within months several thousand miners came into the Rogue, Illinois and South Umpqua watersheds.

Less than four months later, on December 1, 1855 the Donation Land Claim Act expired, and the US government began to offer land to white settlers at a flat rate of $1.25 per acre.

By August 1856 the plan for the tribes in the Umpqua District had changed.

In 1860, they were marched 60 miles up the coast to the Alsea subagency in Yachats, a reservation on the Yachats River.

The remaining lands of the Coast Reservation are renamed the Siletz Reservation by Congress in 1875.

In 1876, the Yachats area was opened for pioneer settlement, and the Tribal members were released to return to

The upper Umpqua people were athapaskan speakers, while the Yoncalla were penutian speakers. (Sapir in 1907 gets this wrong, he notes the ‘Ya gala’ ie: Yoncalla are athapaskan speakers.)

In 1916, the Tribes established a formal, elected tribal government that they have maintained ever since.

In 1918, our Cow Creek Umpqua Elders formalized our Tribal government and began to lobby for federal services, especially for education services for our children.

The Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw were granted a land claims hearing in 1931, but their claims were denied.

In the late 1940’s, the United States government started action to withdraw recognition of some Indian tribes.

Then, in 1941, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) took a small privately donated parcel (6.12 acres) into trust for the Confederated Tribes in the city of Coos Bay.

In 1948, the Coos, Lower Umpqua's sent forty-eight delegates to the Siletz Reservation to express their disapproval of termination; but were not allowed to make their case, as they had been locked out of the meeting and were told the termination bill did not affect them”.

The Cow Creek Tribe received no prior notification of the Termination Act, as required by law, and because of that were able to obtain presidential action in 1980 to take a land claims case to the United States Court of Claims.

Even without a reservation, our people remained in their homelands. As a result of legislation which passed both houses of Congress by “unanimous consent” on December 29, 1982, a “recognition” law was signed for the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua.

In 1987, the Tribe approved a constitution and began to lay the groundwork for a self-sufficiency plan.

The Cow Creek Band of the Umpqua opened an Indian Gaming facility in 1992 to provide jobs and a steady source of revenues for the tribe.

In 2004 the tribe donated over $1.6 million to more than 250 recipients, including Douglas County schools.