page_title: Native American peoples of Oregon
section_title: Arrival of the Anglo missionaries
hierarchical_section_title: Native American peoples of Oregon / History / Arrival of the Anglo missionaries
caption_attribution_description: This map shows Oregon Country, 1818–1846
context_page_description: The Native American peoples of Oregon are the set of indigenous peoples who have inhabited or who still inhabit the area delineated in today's state of Oregon in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. While the state of Oregon currently maintains relations with nine federally recognized tribal groups, the state was previously home to a much larger number of autonomous tribal groups, which today either no longer exist or have been absorbed into these larger confederated entities.
context_section_description: Despite the myriad of tribal entities spread throughout the Oregon Country, their historical occupation and implicit claim to the land was barely noted and not recognized by white Americans in the East. In 1828 New England teacher Hall Jackson Kelley, a leading exponent of white colonization of the Oregon Country, hailed the region as "the most valuable of all the unoccupied parts of the earth" in a memorial to Congress.
  Kelley's enthusiasm was shared by others, seeking access to what they perceived as uninhabited land and willing to engage in building new communities on the frontier. European-American colonization of the Oregon Country began in earnest in 1829 with the establishment of Oregon City on the confluence of the Clackamas and Willamette rivers by John McLoughlin, chief factor for the region of Hudson's Bay Company.
  The newcomers of the 1820s brought with them diseases for which the native populations of the Oregon Country had no immunity. Waves of disease swept Native American communities between 1824 and 1829, with smallpox, measles, and an unknown ailment described at the time as "ague fever" annihilating tens of thousands. It is reckoned by one observer that 80% of the native population died in a single summer, with villages depopulated and the bare remnants of some tribal groups absorbed into others.
  On December 11, 1838, U.S. Senator Lewis F. Linn of Missouri introduced a bill calling for the occupation of the Oregon Country region north of 42 degrees latitude and west of the Rocky Mountains. A fort was to be established on the Columbia River and the new entity was to be subject to rule by the military force of the United States and subject to the tax laws thereof. The stage was thereby set for conflict between the American government in Washington, D.C., and the bands of indigenous peoples who had historically inhabited the area so claimed.
  Missionaries headed by the Methodist Jason Lee were the advance guard of European-American colonization, with a large "Indian church" established at The Dalles in 1839 in an effort to convert members of the Klickitat tribe to Christianity. Lee also set out to build a new settlement at the mouth of the Umpqua River, familial grounds of the Umpqua tribe. Lee and his party traversed the region among a tolerant native population, which, as one early historian noted, was found by the missionaries to be "easily impressed, and apt at imitating the forms of devotion."
  Ever since the first arrival of European trappers and traders, the native peoples of the Columbia basin were swept by epidemics of newly introduced diseases that annihilated a vast percentage of the population. Lee's party found that the population in the region that he visited had been reduced to less than 375 people, and believed that the life expectancy of even these survivors was limited. Plans for a new mission in the Umpqua River valley were consequently abandoned.
  The Methodists continued to harbor grand designs upon the new territory. A mission-owned lumber mill was established, as was a "manual-labor school," intended to instruct the indigenous population in the ways of domestic industry. Following a May 1841 meeting of the territorial Methodist society, a $10,000 building was erected in the vicinity of today's city of Salem on the Chemeketa Plain. The group established there a school for the native population, which was operated for nine months before being abandoned in the spring of 1843 for lack of success.
  Additional European-American immigrants began to arrive in this period, with growth centered at Oregon City, which grew from nor more than 3 or 4 buildings to about 30 by the spring of 1843. At the behest of Jason Lee, an Indian Agent was appointed by the federal government to administer its affairs in the Oregon Country. Elijah White was appointed to this position early in 1842 by the administration of President John Tyler, who declined to name a governor for the region at that time. White was also given verbal permission to make use of government funds for the necessary expenses associated with 
caption: Map illustrating British and American territorial designs in the Pacific Northwest
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