Sovereigns of Themselves:
A Liberating History of Oregon and Its Coast
Volume IX
Abridged Online Edition
Compiled By M. Constance Guardino III
  And Rev. Marilyn A. Riedel
January 2006 Maracon Productions

Historians M. Constance Guardino III and Rev. Marilyn A. Riedel

I offer thanks to my friends, relatives, and ancestors whose strength of purpose
led me to my own. A special thanks to my co-author,
Rev. Marilyn A. Riedel, for her deep love and dedication to me and this project.
Without her tireless effort and selfless interest,
this liberating history of Oregon would never have been written.

Chapter 52: Fort Yamhill 1856

 By a perverse quirk of history, Fort Yamhill, the most important of the military posts associated with the Coast Reservation, has in all printed sources been incorrectly located. The only existing plan of the fort (which was named for the Yamel, who, along with the Atfalati, belonged to the northern dialect division of the Kalapooian linguistic stock) drawn in 1856, and the only census which enumerated the garrison, 1860, support this view. A letter written in 1856 by Cpt. Andrew Jackson Smith furnishes another clue:

 The post is located, just within the reservation on the road from the settlements at the only point of ingress and egress on this portion of the reservation for teams and horsemen.

(1) Site of Fort Hoskins 1922 (2) Sy Copeland, John C. Loutsenhiser,
Charles A. Frank, James Plunkett (3) Fort Yamhill Blockhouse

 The route of this road from the Grand Ronde Agency to Willamina has changed. It is now Highway 22, winding through the gorge of Cosper Creek to Yamhill River. When Fort Yamhill flourished, the road crossed the range of hills between the Grand Ronde and the Yamhill Valley half a mile northeast of Valley Junction. Gen. Oliver Otis Howard (1830-1909) traveled the road in 1876 from Willamina to the Grand Ronde Agency; his "strong, high, two-seated wagon" reached the site of Fort Yamhill "by a mile of ascent at the close of a long and hard road..." The map of the Grand Ronde Agency in the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1879 shows this old route. Remnants of it are preserved on the Spirit Mountain quadrangle map of 1941, in the form of a dry weather road in two unconnected sections.
 The old route of the road establishes the site of Fort Yamhill. A marker placed on the Three Rivers Highway in 1926 located the site through a liberal display of imagination. Nothing is left of this attempt of the Yamhill Chapter of the DAR except "Kissin' Rock," a seven ton boulder situated half a mile north of Valley Junction.
The disappearance of the tablet may have been a blessing in disguise. Sheridan (1831-1888) did not arrive at Fort Yamhill before April 25, 1856. To reach the site, which is about 300 yards east of the monument, it is necessary to descend into the gorge, cross Cosper Creek, and climb 200 feet up the steep, densely covered eastern side of the gorge. Obviously Cosper Creek gorge was not the route from the Grand Ronde Agency to the Yamhill Valley until modern construction methods opened a path for the highway.
 Valley Junction on Highway 18, is the best point of departure from which to locate the site. Twelve hundred yards north an unimproved road enters Highway 22 from the right. It is the remnant of the old road formerly connecting the agency and the settlements. Two hundred yards east-southeast on this dry-weather road two houses and several farm buildings occupy the approximate area where the sutler's store stood. The "gentle western slope" which the fort commanded had not changed. The old road, roughly the northern boundary of the camp, crosses the mountain ridge in the form of a cow path. The highest point offers a magnificent view into "a small, somewhat circular valley, called the Grand Ronde" (northwest) and into the Yamhill Valley in the direction of Willamina and Sheridan (east-southeast). Sheridan might have stood here when he went "out early in the morning to a commanding point above the post," from which he "could see a long distance down the road as it ran through the valley of the Yamhill..."
 Furthermore, no sketches or photographs of Fort Yamhill have been found, and the few reports of eyewitnesses fail to convey a clear picture of the post. One description, combining imagination with reality, embedded in a saccharine love tale of the 1890s by Samuel L. Simpson, testifies to the "antebellum gaiety and folly" at the fort. Simpson, the son of postmaster and sutler Ben Simpson, clerked as a youth in his father’s store at the post:

  The fort, young Simpson recalled, occupied the sloping top of a great hill which, standing at the gateway of the Grand Ronde Valley, was naturally adapted for military occupation. The crest of the hill made a semi-circular sweep in the east and south, the found falling away abruptly from its clear-cut rim to the winding course of Yamhill River, far below. On the east, too, a phalanx of firs, scaling the rugged heights, waved their green plumes over their morning shadows across the smooth plateau of the parade grounds. The other buildings of the post, soldiers' quarters, mess room, hospital, commissary, guard room, etc. occupied the remaining sides of the quadrangle, all marvelously white in their constantly refreshed coasts of whitewash. On the western side of the quadrangle, with fine oaks flanking it on the north, stood the regulation blockhouse, strong, dark, menacing. A stately flagstaff, supported by two gleaming brass field pieces, stood in the center of the parade ground.

 Reportedly the buildings at the fort were crude structures of log and rough sawed lumber. In 1888, Sheridan in his Personal Memoirs,

In those days, the government didn't provide very liberally for sheltering its soldiers and officers, and men were frequently forced to eke out parsimonious appropriations by toilsome work, or go without shelter in most in hospitable regions. Of course this post was no exception to the general rule, and as all hands were occupied in its construction, and I the only officer present, I was kept busily employed in supervising matters, both as a commandant and quartermaster until July, when Sgt. D. A. Russell... was ordered to take command, and I was retired from the first part of my duties.

The plan of 1856, with the help of a few landmarks, locates the various buildings. The officers' quarters occupied the most desirable site, far off from the noisy blacksmith shop. Hospital, guardhouse, laundress' quarters, bakery, stable, and granary were scattered over an area of approximately 1,300 square feet below the officers' quarters, the barracks were cluttered about a central parade ground, with a blockhouse and flagpole in the center. This area is now a grain field. The poles of a power line traversing it are numbered ST 27 2A, B and ST 26 7A, B. The rim above the grain field is—for eyes accustomed to waste and pillage of natural resources—still "thickly timbered." Maple, wild cherry, alder, and white oak are "to be found at a few points." Grass and thistles, five feet high during the summer, gently veil the remnants of logging operations. In the distance stumps and fallen logs are hidden from view by underbrush and scrub trees.
 With the prosaic facts about Fort Yamhill buried in military archives, the memories of the survivors grew richer with the passing years, and Simpson's "regulation blockhouse" became a symbol. Today, the old stockade possesses all the requisites of a venerable historic relic. Its structure is, in fact, unique among the blockhouses on the Pacific Coast:

The upper block is of the same size as the lower, but turned on a true diagonal, with small hipped roofs on three corners of the lower part of the entrance platform ... on the fourth.

The Fighting Joes

 Even before it became a museum piece, the blockhouse accumulated legends. Inevitably, because of his brilliant military career, the name of Sheridan dominates the fable of Fort Yamhill. He was the most illustrious of a group of officers who, through their service at the post in Polk County, helped to further the slogan of Yamhill County, "Where all great men get their start."
 He lost subsequently to pioneers and settlers who supposedly built Fort Yamhill as protection against the Tillamook in the winter of 1855, on the western slope of the mountain range between Grand Ronde and Yamhill Valley. Both stories are highly suggestive, but neither is persuasive.
 There is no evidence to support the old view; Sheridan himself never claimed any credit for a blockhouse at Grand Ronde. And there is no evidence to support the new view; squatters built strong-holds against the Indians in the winter of 1855, but hardly at Grand Ronde, though Warren Vaughn locates a blockhouse at Eldridge Trask's land in Tillamook County, about 20 miles north-northeast of the agency. Palmer's employees, who established the agency at Grand Ronde in the winter of 1855-1856, did not mention a blockhouse in their reports. And the settlers of Yamhill County did not mention a blockhouse as their defense contribution when they protested against incarcerating Indians at Grand Ronde and demanded protection.
 The gallery of legitimate heroes includes also 2nd Lt. William B. Hazen, Cpt. A. J. Smith, and Sgt. D. A. Russell. But in its diligent acquisition of suitable celebrities, the fable of Fort Yamhill has also usurped two "Fighting Joes," major generals Joseph Hooker (1814-1879) and Joseph Wheeler (1836-1906), who never served at the fort. The post returns do not mention any officer named Hooker; Joseph Hooker resigned his commission as lieutenant colonel on February 21, 1853, and did not return to the army until May 17, 1861, with the opening of the Civil War. He did, however, work as superintendent of military roads in Oregon from 1858 to 1859. Joseph Wheeler certainly never saw Fort Yamhill; the fable evidently substitutes him for 2nd Lt. James Wheeler, Company C, 1st Dragoons, who served from August 1856 to March 1857 and from April to June, 1857 as post adjutant; but Wheeler is not heroic material, having been cashiered on May 20, 1862.

Hazen Erects Blockhouse 1856

 A fable is necessary if the ten painfully plain years of Fort Yamhill are to acquire glamour. Evidence indicates that 2nd lt. Hazen, commander of a detachment of Company D, 4th California Infantry, erected the blockhouse on March 25, 1856, and that it was located half a mile within the northern boundary of Polk County. "I shall proceed at once to build a blockhouse," Hazen informed the adjutant general in Washington DC on March 31, 1856, six days after establishing the camp at Grand Ronde,

as cases are now of frequent occasion, showing the treachery of Indian character and the necessity of such works of defense.

The memories of the Rogue River War were fresh in his mind. At Star Gulch on Applegate Creek he had observed the advantages of blockhouses when his mountain Howitzer failed to subdue "three heavy log houses" fortified by Indians. He found no blockhouse at Grand Ronde; he built one. But this achievement was not sufficiently "warlike" to command inclusion in the eight-page appendix of his Civil War memoirs, Service In Indian Warfare. The accounts of Fort Yamhill in Sheridan's Personal Memoirs (1888) and Dr. Rodney Glisan's Journal of Army Life also ignore the blockhouse. Glisan arrived at the fort early in September 1856, and his journal runs through February 10, 1865. Had its origin been unusual, these officers would probably have commented on the fact. Even Simpson, with his vested interest in pioneers, saw in this structure no object of historic veneration.
 In September, Cpt. Smith, following custom, chose the name for the post because it "is on the south fork of Yamhill River." Lt. Hazen supervised the erection of quarters and barracks. Three months later the commanding officer submitted a plan of the fort to the Department of the Pacific. Smith wrote:

 The buildings are frame; weathered vertically with projecting roof, cottage style. It is intended that the kitchens, mess rooms, etc. in the soldiers' quarters shall be in the basement... Owing to the lateness of the season the quarters could not be finished inside this autumn.

Completion of the company quarters and the hospital was not reported until more than a year later. "To Lt. Sheridan," Cpt. Russell informed San Francisco on January 22, 1856,

in bringing the work at this post to this early completion, great credit is due, and I hardly know which is the more commendable, the energy, zeal, and uniform good judgment which he has carried on his work or the rigid economy he has exercised in all his expenditures.

 That summer the garrison consisted of 75 men. The census of 1860 enumerated two commissioned officers and 60 enlisted men stationed at Fort Yamhill. During the Civil War the fort retained its character as a one company post. Three months after Appomatox, it quartered its largest number of soldiers, 128 men of  Company D, 4th California Infantry, and Company A, First Oregon Infantry. Eleven months later, in June, 1866, Fort Yamhill ceased to exist.
 Sheridan served at Fort Yamhill under Sgt. Russell until Russell was called east in 1861, when Sheridan assumed full command.

Sheridan Crestfallen at Fort Yamhill

 Sheridan had a particularly hard difficult time with the Indians during his stay at Fort Yamhill, although he spoke Chinook "fluently" by his own testimony in his Memoirs. After 16 Indians once shot an Indian "doctress" nearly at his feet, he went to deal with them in their own village. While he was explaining that the guilty persons must be delivered up for punishment, the situation grew sticky:

The conversation waxing hot and the Indians gathering close in around me, I unbuttoned the flap of my pistol holster, to the ready for any emergency. When the altercation became most bitter I put my hand to my hip to draw my pistol, but discovered it was gone—stolen by one of the rascals surrounding me. Finding myself unarmed, I modified my tone and manner to correspond with my helpless condition... As soon as an opportunity offered, and I could, without too much loss of self-respect, and without damaging my reputation among the Indians, I moved out to where the sergeant held my horse, mounted, and crossing the Yamhill River close by, called back in Chinook from the farther bank that "the 16 men who killed the woman must be delivered up, and my six-shooter also." This was responded to by contemptuous laughter, so I went back to the military post somewhat crestfallen...

A deal was made later with one of the Indian leaders who said Sheridan could kill one of the 16 men who had probably fired the fatal bullet, although 16 bullets were in the victim's body. This unfortunate fellow was considered a bad Indian the tribe wanted to get rid of anyway. The other 15 surrendered to the army, and were made to work at the post, but eventually went back to farm their own land.
 Sheridan remained in charge until September 1861, chafing under the enforced absence from fighting. He wrote,

 On the day of the week our courier or messenger was expected back from Portland, I would go out early in the morning to a commanding point above the post, from which I could see a long distance down the road as it ran through the valley of the Yamhill, and there I would watch with anxiety for his coming, longing for good news.

When he was finally called he told his men he was going into war "to win a captain's spurs, or die with my boots on. Goodbye, boys, I may never see you again."

Blockhouse Moved to Dayton 1910

 For ten years the dark hand hewn logs of the bulwark presented a striking contrast to the whitewashed cottages of the army post. At noon, August 20, 1866, seven weeks after the last man of Cpt. Charles Lafollett's company of the First Oregon Infantry had left Fort Yamhill, Gilbert K. Litchfield, the last post sutler, auctioned the government property, netting $1,200 in greenbacks. He personally "bid on the old blockhouse, paying $2.50 for it." Lafollett passed the building on to Grand Ronde Agency, while he was employed as agent from July 1869 to August 1871. The structure was used first for a jail for unruly Indians and served later as a warehouse. It stood about where the Agency Community Hall stood in 1944. For 40 years it was occasionally mentioned in the reports of the Grand Ronde agents. Now and then rotten logs were replaced.
 In December 1910, the Secretary of the Interior gave the blockhouse to the City of Dayton, whose interest in it was supported by the influence of Sen. George Earle Chamberlain, who was governor of Oregon 1903-1919. The townsfolk of Willamina and Sheridan and the Indians at Grand Ronde now became concerned about the "treasure," but were too late. A long procession of teamsters carried the dismantled relic into Dayton on June 9, 1911, unmolested by citizens of Sheridan who, a few weeks earlier, determined to prevent the disgrace. On Sheridan Day, Aug. 23, 1912, during the DAR reunion, the blockhouse was dedicated to Gen. Joel Palmer, first superintendent of Indian affairs in the Oregon Territory (1848-1858). and an address was given by Judge M . C. George.
 The large Palmer House in Dayton was built in 1852. To this place came many notables of pre-Civil War times, including Cpt. U. S. Grant, who later became an general and the 18th president of the US (1869-1877), and Lt. Sheridan, who also became a famous general. In the house are various relics, including an autographed photograph of Dr. John McLoughlin (1784-1857), chief factor for the Hudson's Bay Company.

(1) General Sheridan (2) Dr. McLoughlin (3) Civil War Soldier (4) General Augur

Royal A. Bensell

 It is an unavoidable fact, however, that many of the army's worst troubles were caused by its own unbelievable red tape, its gross remissness and bungling. Moreover, the army contained officers, some in the highest ranks, and countless soldiers, who were hardly qualified for inclusion in the lowest order of homo sapiens. They were men without a redeeming quality, who had no more compunction about murdering an Indian than about shooting a rabbit. They left a record of barbarism that outshone any savagery displayed by their red adversaries. The army's job in the West would have been difficult without these psychopaths in uniform.

 The life of Royal Augustus Bensell (1838-1921) is in the tradition of the pioneer. Published accounts of his career underline such attributes as his generation delighted to glorify—the young student in the log school house, the intrepid homesteader, the farsighted railroad builder, the faithful public official, and the associate of celebrities. But, ironically, no reference is made to what is probably Bensell's most original and permanent contribution to the new America in the West—his military journal. Though it records the activities of only 31 months from a life of 83 years, it illuminates a facet of Western history otherwise known only through a clouded confusion of newspaper accounts, latter-day reminiscences, and scanty official records.
 Judge Royal A. Bensell, as the chronicles of his time liked to call him, was born in Cassville, Wisconsin Territory (1836-1848), on June 4, 1838. This date, from the Portrait and Biographical Record of Western Oregon (1904), confirmed for the year by Bensell's obituary in the Newport Yaquina Bay News, appears acceptable. It agrees with the information furnished to the enumerator of the census of 1870, the first Oregon census in which Bensell's name appears. But to fix 1838 as the year of his birth is to question the convenient legend created (probably during one of the election campaigns in the 1870s) that Bensell was born in 1835 and "voted first vote for Fremont." Of course, if one recalls Bayard Taylor's allusions to the voting procedures in California mining camps, the 18-year-old Bensell might have voted for "The Pathfinder" in 1856.

Charles E. Bensell, MD

 Dr. Charles E. Bensell, his father, looked back on an eventful life in 1837 when he married Juliet Cottle in Cassville, Grant County, Wisconsin—or Belmont, Lafayette County, if one trusts his obituary. He was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on July 4, 1800. He sailed for some years on a whaling vessel, land saw the Pacific Coast. He then studied medicine (following the example of his father, an Englishman, who lived in Philadelphia and served in the Revolutionary Army as a surgeon), and may have earned a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
 The New Jersey town where Charles Bensell started to practice his profession could not hold the restless sailor. He migrated to Saint Louis and joined Gen. William Henry Ashley's (1778-1838) expedition into the Rockies to the mouth of Yellowstone River in 1822. After sailing the seas again for four years, he served in the Black Hawk War and fought with the Illinois militia under Gen. Henry Atkinson (1782-1842) at the Battle of Bad Axe, on August 2, 1832. For a number of years he was engaged in lead mining in Northwestern Illinois at Galena.

The Bensells Move to Prairie La Porte 1839

 In 1839, Charles Bensell moved with his family from Cassville across the Mississippi into the adjacent part of Wisconsin Territory, and located on a claim in the newly established Clayton County, in what became the state of Iowa in December 1846. His farm was in the vicinity of Prairie La Porte six miles south of Jacksonville, county seat after 1843, and six miles north of Turkey River. Prairie La Porte, one of the villages hugging the western bank of the Mississippi, sheltered by high bluffs from the cold winds that sweep the prairies, had its name changed to Guttenberg by a predominantly German population in 1847.

Barefoot Boy With Cheek

 Royal Bensell proudly related his hard life on the farm in a series of nostalgic articles which he wrote for the Newport Yaquina Mail half a century later. His "Reminiscence of Happy Youthful Days Gone By" describes boyhood incidents, enchanted by distance, in the northeastern portion of the Hawkeye State, a section he mistakenly refers to as northwestern or western Iowa. Barefoot, he planted corn all day for ten cents, and on one occasion plowed and harrowed behind his neighbor's oxen two long weeks in exchange for "a new chip hat worth 37 cents." He was "thick" with a little, freckled-faced girl, and in his reminisces expressed a doubt that "anything since has given me more pleasure than I enjoyed eating a piece of her folks' cornbread after she had licked the maple sugar away."
 In the "good old-times," cornmeal mush in milk was Bensell's regular diet. "Two coon skins, two dozen eggs, a pound of butter, and a few twists of wool" were traded for groceries in Guttenberg. "Cash and Barter" were the favorite modes of exchange, "and the hogs driven to Dubuque and sold were the only way to get money to pay taxes."

Bensell "Spells Down" Entire School in Garnavillo

 Young Bensell attended school in Garnavillo, the county seat, which had changed its designation from Jacksonville to honor the Irish village of that name. "Garnavillo is... a lovely village of about 300 inhabitants." Editor Jesse Clement informed the readers of the Dubuque Weekly Times in the early spring of 1859, "and is dotted all over with farm houses, many of which are surrounded by a profusion of shade trees and other indices of enterprise and taste." Clement mentions three schools in Garnavillo; and it appears doubtful that Bensell went to school in a log schoolhouse as the Portrait (1940) chronicled. At the end of the second term he was in the highest class in "Websters Fourth Reader," and could "spell down the whole school..."

Printer’s Devil for Clayton County Herald 1853

 However limited his formal education might have been, Bensell had a good chance to broaden it while working as printer's devil for the Garnavillo Clayton County Herald, the first newspaper in Clayton County. It is very unlikely that he started this career in 1851, as the portrait states. The first number of the Herald, an independent weekly published by Henry S. Granger, did not appear before January 28, 1853. Bensell's connection with the paper ended in 1854. In that year, Charles Bensell, whose wife, Julia Cottle, had died in 1849, emigrated to California with his son Royal and daughters Mary (1841-1936) and Marguerite (1844-1942).

Bensells Emigrate to California 1854

 Bensell's reminiscences contain no allusion to the crossing of the plains, though they were written in a period when all settlers were eager to be recognized as members of the elite who had actually lived the saga of the covered wagons and the Western trails. His obituary in the Newport paper refers briefly to "six long weary months" during which the family was "en route from Independence, Missouri, to San Jose, California." A typewritten copy of the "Reminiscences of Margaret Bensell" in the University of Oregon Library adds a few details. At the age of 96, the diarist's youngest sister, Marguerite, dictated these reminiscences to a relative. In April 1854, she recalled 96 years later, the Bensells left Iowa for "Capa Gray, Missouri," where they formed a traveling company with other members of the family under the leadership of John Cottle, a cousin of Juliet's. On a stern wheeler, the group went down the Missouri to Saint Joseph, 63 miles north-northwest of Kansas City. In May, 41 men, women and children were on their way to California.

Bensells Moil for Gold in Volcano

 During the next two years the Bensells lived on John Cottle's ranch near San Jose in the Santa Clara Valley, about 40 miles southeast of San Francisco. Father and son worked on farms until they had enough money to follow the lure of the goldfields to Amadore Country in the foothills of the Sierras east-southeast of Sacramento. Volcano, the goldrush town, was their home for a decade. The menfolk moiled in the hot ravines at gulch or placer mining, the womenfolk washed for storekeepers and got a "good reputation as seamstresses." The chapter on "Volcano and Vicinity" in The History of Amadore County, with its scattered references to physicians, does not mention the Bensells.
 Father and son probably shared the dreams of all miners during these years; they certainly shared the misfortune of most of them. The decline of placer mining which came soon in Amadore County—as everywhere—may have been one of the incentives which made the elder Bensell remember his medical training and the younger responsive to the call for volunteers after the firing at Fort Sumter. Royal Bensell was 16 years old when the family arrived in the Golden State; he left El Dorado at the age of 23, a Union soldier. During these seven years he seems to have acquired the foundation of his political and economic credo, and formed the opinions that made him the "stanch Republican" so conspicuous in the Oregon election campaigns of the 1870s and 1880s. His contempt for "bosses" may have been the outgrowth of impressions he gained while seeing the California democracy in operation. At the age of 18 he could have followed at close range the reign of the second vigilance committee in San Francisco and listened to the reports about scandals in the bay city, which no doubt reached the mining settlements as distorted as rumors concerning new gold discoveries reached the bay.

Bensell Nettled by "Fling of Inferiority"

 The years in California also shaped his social conscience. An unsuccessful miner, Bensell was surely aware of the disdain in which the merchants held his class, and the contempt and fear which the farming population felt for the entire mining society. A sense of his inferior social position in California may underlie the statement about the "palpable extravagance ever noticeable" in California women, and may have influenced his decision not to return to "the very small house" in California at the end of his military service. It probably explains the outspoken contempt for superiors which he showed all his life and displayed so often in the army.
 Bensell's class consciousness apparently fed his insatiable desire to rise and be the first in the limited field which life had reserved for him—a character trait already evident in the young farm lad in northeastern Iowa who was "nettled" by the "fling of inferiority" before entering grammar school. The remnant of the collections of the short-lived Miner's Library Association at Volcano would have been a greater attraction for Bensell than saloons and fandango halls. Yearning for self-improvement was reflected also in a high standard of "penmanship." In noting the receipt of a letter from his sister Marguerite, he took immense satisfaction in her improved hand. The thespian societies flourishing in the town and in Amadore County among the miners may have awakened his interest in the stage and may have influenced him to join the "Nouvelle Troupe," the group of performers entertaining the soldiers of Company D in the Oregon settlements.
 The mining camp environment—Bensell's high school and college—evidently increased his understanding of and his ability to judge human nature. The lessons during these years formed his outlook on life. The scenes he viewed made him an opinionated adversary of liquor and tobacco. Since he never hid his convictions, this meant for him three years of constant battling against the excesses of alcohol among his hard-drinking army comrades.
 In his journal he wrote:

 April 26, 1862: Cpl. Erwin drunk, drew a bayonet on Jordan 2nd. Jordan gave him a plug in the face (Cpl. Redding placed Erwin under arrest). He then drew a knife and defied any damned son-of-a-bitch to fight.

"Bold and decided in his manner," was the verdict of a political writer in an Oregon newspaper during the 1870s "swerving neither to the right nor to the left from his convictions of duty. What he lacks in beauty is made up for by habits of industry and scholarly attainments." The only extant photograph of Bensell from the Civil War period, taken at Albany in the summer of 1863, shows a young man, of medium height, in his mid-20s, whose features are dominated by a well-developed nose. His pose and civilian attire may be well-described as conveying something of the "steady arm of agricultural politeness" which he regarded so highly in some members of his company. With his remarkable sense of sly humor, his insight into human affairs, his intelligence and learning, he effectively underlined in his own manners the peculiar charm which rustic ways have for a society that worships individuals.

Bensell Enrolls in Company D September 28, 1861

 Four months after the beginning of the war between the states, Bensell enrolled as a volunteer in Company D, Fourth California Infantry. He was mustered into the service by Cpt. Henry Moses Judah at Placerville in El Dorado County on September 28, 1861. Sixty-six men had enlisted with him at Volcano in Cpt. Lyman S. Scott’s company ten days earlier. General Orders No. 25, headquarters, Department of the Pacific, October 9, 1861, called on "Judah's California Volunteer Infantry" to be "in readiness to embark" for Fort Vancouver, Washington Territory (1853-1889), at San Francisco on October 17.

Volcano Blues Garrison Fort Yamhill 1861

The company marched 25 miles from Placerville to Auburn on October 13 and reached Camp Sigel on the next day. Fifteen days later, on October 29, Company D passed the Golden Gate on the steamer Cortes and arrived at Fort Vancouver on November 1. On the following day Scott's company was assigned to garrison Fort Yamhill in the Oregon Coast Range. Company D relieved Company I, 9th Infantry, which had been ordered east with the units of the regular army. For the next three years Bensell served as corporal at Fort Yamhill, Fort Hoskins, and Siletz Blockhouse, and kept a daily journal reporting the life of Company D until October 16, 1864, when the 37 members of his company were discharged at Fort Vancouver.

Siletz Agency Farmer 1864

 After his discharge, the former corporal laid the foundation for his business activities and public career as Indian farmer on the Coast Reservation. For 57 years he lived and worked close to the scenes so frequently scorned in his war journal. The "farmer of Chasta Scoton and Superintendent of Farming" at the Siletz Agency under Agent B. F. Simpson quickly established himself in Western Oregon.

Charles E. Bensell Resident Physician 1864-1866

His father, Charles E. Bensell, joined him at the Coast Reservation and was for four years resident physician at Siletz. His sisters, Mary (1841-1936 WI) and Marguerite, married to Joseph Skaggs (1829-1916) and William J. Dunn (1835-1887), moved to Benton County.

Bensell, Meggison and Copeland File Claims at Depot Slough 1866

 On January 8, 1866, the same day on which Sen. James W. Nesmith succeeded in his efforts to open the Indian land of the Coast Reservation between Cape Foulweather and Alsea River for settlement, Royal A. Bensell, George R. Meggison, and Josiah Copeland (the last a former member of Company D) located the first claim at Yaquina Bay, at Depot Slough, where they built a steam sawmill. Two years later Bensell and Meggison acquired the Premier Steam Mills, and shipped lumber directly to San Francisco; the census of 1870 registers Bensell as a lumberman. In 1870, at the Yaquina shipyard, he started building the three-masted schooner Elinorah, 200 tons, named for Ben Simpson's daughter, which was sold by Simpson at San Francisco for $10,000 in 1874.

Bensell Urges Construction of Yaquina Railroad

 Yaquina Bay and the town of Newport—located party on the land claim of Samuel Case, at one time first sergeant in Company D—formed the center of Bensell's enterprises. He was one of the first to urge the construction of the Yaquina railroad, the Willamette Valley & Coast. The section of the road connecting Corvallis and Newport was completed on December 31, 1884. The trains (the first locomotive did not succeed in making the trip over the whole line before March 1885) gradually replaced the stage that had run through the Coast Range along Yaquina River since May 1866. Bensell's contributions to the Willamette Valley & Coast Railroad seems to have been restricted to publicity articles [under the pseudonyms "Rialto" and "Avalo”" for the Corvallis Gazette, the Portland Oregonian, the Newport Yaquina Post and Yaquina Mail, and newspapers in San Francisco.

Fagan's 1877 History of Benton County Based Partly on Bensell's Account

 The History of Benton County, based partly on Bensell's information, does not mention his name in the chapter on the building of the Yaquina Railroad. Randall V. Mills's caustic report on the construction and operation of the "Frustration Route" reviews dreams and unpleasant realities with the impractical idea, reveals dubious schemes and lists the men behind the scene—without any reference to Bensell. Hand in hand with his campaign for the railroad went the advertising of Yaquina Bay as "harbor of refuge" for boats operating between San Francisco and Puget Sound and as ocean outlet for the agricultural wealth of the Willamette Valley.

Bensell Holds Elective Office 1868

 Judge Royal A. Bensell held his first elective office for seven days. He was a member of the Oregon legislature as representative from Benton County from September 15 50 22, 1868, when he was ousted by the Democratic majority, which decided a dispute over the legality of contested votes in Benton County in favor of his Democratic opponent, Charles B. Bellinger. In 1876 he served a full term as representative from Benton County in the new, uncompleted capitol, having been elected as a Republican with Democratic support on purely local issues; he was the candidate identified with improvements at Yaquina Bay. Bensell was a member of the Committee on Federal Relations, submitted memorials advocating the further development of Yaquina Bay, and cast his vote with his Republican colleagues for Jesse Applegate in the "Old Roman's" unsuccessful attempt to succeed James K. Kelly in the US Senate. In 1882, he ran as Republican candidate for the State Senate in the district composed of Polk and Benton counties, but failed by a narrow margin. He was Justice of the Peace at Newport and Collector of Customs for the Yaquina District under the Hayes and Harrison administrations.

Bensell Marries Mary Sturdevant 1868

 In Newport, in 1868, Bensell married Mary Elizabeth Hall Sturdevant, who had come from Illinois to Oregon with her first spouse, Clark M. Sturdevant, in the spring of 1865. For two years she was "the only white woman living on Yaquina Bay." Bensell supported his wife with counsel in law suits and as a real estate agent; he is thus listed in the census of 1880. He served his community as school director and member of the city council. Four times he held the office of mayor of Newport. He was agent for the steamer Alexander Duncan, had a captain's commission for 17 years (and a title for life), and at one time owned a steamboat [Pioneer?] which plied between Elk City and Newport.

Chapter 53: Grand Ronde Agents

 The early agents at Grand Ronde dealt with the Indians there in terms of three great valleys from which they came. Within those valleys there were distinctions of language and culture, often quite radical, but the whole thrust of government policy was to minimize the differences between the Indians, and so the grouping by valleys was used.
 The three valleys were the Willamette, the Umpqua and the Rogue. The Willamette, bounded on the east by the Cascade Mountains and on the west by the Coast Range, was for Oregon what the Sacramento Valley was for California. Both paralleled the coast; both were desire by non-indian settlers. In between them, at right angles to the coast, were three more rugged valleys, the Umpqua, the Rogue and the Klamath, where life was quite different from that of the heartland valleys. The three could well have been made a separate territory or state, but the diplomats preferred an arbitrary line, the 42nd parallel, which had been used back East for several boundaries. Thus, when the California Gold Rush overflowed from the Sacramento into the Klamath and Rogue valleys, its lawlessness brought woe, not only to the Rogue Rivers but also to the noncombatant Umpquas and the remnants on the Willamette.
 There was a motivation for choosing the Grand Ronde as a reservation. The whites would have preferred to see the Indians all sent east of the Cascades, and the Indians begged for tiny reservations with each band in a pocket of its ancestral land. It was the practical and noble-minded Joel Palmer of Dayton who rapidly engineered the compromise: west of the Cascades, but also west of the Coast Range—with one exception. The great bulk of the land reserved for the Indians of Western Oregon would be along the coast, but there is one point at which the crest of the Coast Range swings dramatically west, and spurs sweep down to enclose a natural circle of ten square miles of prairie land, aptly named "the Grand Ronde." Palmer bought this up from the whites who had settled it and made it first a temporary reserve for those destined to the rugged land along the coast, and then the permanent home of the more peaceful bands of all three valleys. The local anglos resisted and asked for soldiers, but Palmer's brilliant compromise prevailed.
 To give an overview of the history of Grand Ronde Reservation, it is necessary to line up a cavalcade of its chief officers throughout its existence. None of these portraits is exhaustive, and they are based primarily on the study of each agent's annual reports.

John F. Miller 1856-1861

 The first 12 months at Grand Ronde were marked by the comings and goings of several subagents, with the real responsibility falling back on to Superintendent Joel Palmer. By the summer of 1856, the population was about 1,200 and the prospects for the coming winter were grim indeed. A large construction force of whites was on the payroll, a fact which did much to reconcile the local farmers to the presence of the Indians, but a strong hand was going to be needed to dismiss these men when the winter put a stop to their construction jobs. Already the finances were crying out for a halt. Palmer found the man he wanted in Cpt. John F. Miller, a 28-year-old of firm character and keen business sense. In that tough era, it also meant much that Miller was of imposing stature and had much military and legislative experience behind him. Self-made and self-educated, he had easily won the hand of a governor's daughter in Missouri, and he would keep his family of five girls safely on the farm at Broadmead, nearly 20 miles from the agency—none of that shabby living for them!
 His own reports, of course, give a glowing picture, but his successor, understandably, charges him with gross neglect. He did drastically reduce expenses from $500 a day to $65—ruthless, perhaps, but largely a clearing up of inefficiencies and corruption. Being self-made, Miller saw little point in any schooling or even in doctoring, but he claimed to have given both such programs a fair trial.
 Miller's macho bearing made it easy for him to dismiss employees who would not accept a reduction in salary, but he found it harder to deal with those who smuggled liquor to the Indians; in this he needed help from the military at the fort.
 Miller parcels out praise and blame in terms of industriousness and the virtues of the self-made man. He speaks politely of religion, along with education, as an aid to the supreme goal of "civilization," but finds both of those aids proven useless in Oregon's experience. He is ever ready to recognize the worthwhile individual even in the midst of tribal groups he despises. He repeatedly pleads for fair play in regard to Chief Louis Nespussing of the Umpquas—another self made man.
 In his later years, Miller refused to plant grain on the government acres; this seems to have been in order to force the Indians into self-reliance, but it also occurred in a context of neglect of the buildings and equipment, which suggests a lack of dedication. His successor seems to have understood Miller's while corps of employees as thus lacking in dedication in the Indians' needs. In later years, the Indians, very rightly, would attribute the progress they made in these earlier years, not to the agents, nor even to the federal funds that trickled down to them, but to the lessons and wages acquired when working for local whites.
 In later years, Miller was a very rich man, but he lost the elections in which he ran for Governor and for US Senator.

James B. Condon 1861-1864

 The election of Pres. Abraham Lincoln led to the replacement of the Democrat Miller by a Republican: James B. Condon, an Irishman who had come to the states at the age of five and was currently a lawyer with experience in the Oregon legislature. Aged 34, he was still a city man, but was now plunged into the rural problems of Grand Ronde.
 Arriving in the midst of the harvest, Condon was shocked to find that Miller had left him no written records to guide him and not even an office to work in. Moreover, Miller's employees almost all abandoned their posts immediately. Condon managed to gather a new team and to formulate far-seeing plans, including those for a fishery and for grazing grounds across the pass in the Salmon River Valley, but his first winter, one of the coldest and wettest ever, forced him into short-range rescue operations. First the mill had to be put into operation, to produce the lumber for repairing the buildings. Then he set up a model farm, on which he gave the Indians agricultural instruction and employment at the same Condon was also very concerned about white contamination of the Indians through liquor and prostitution, and presented a stern face to the solders at the fort. He once gave a drunken corporal a black eye and a thorough thrashing.
 Condon seems to have undergone a change after his initial successes. The Civil War was in progress, and Oregon was suffering from monetary inflation, which greatly lessened the value of fixed salaries, such as those at Indian agencies. In the strife that resulted, Condon was vindicated but seems to have lost heart and to have avoided making any decisions in his last months. On leaving Grand Ronde, Condon practiced law at The Dalles, where he was honored by many friends until his death. He was replaced by the temporary appointment of another man who had been having other troubles elsewhere.

Benjamin Simpson 1864

 Condon's immediate successor, Benjamin Simpson, served as agent from February to June 1864, but his stay is noteworthy. Simpson, the 46-year-old jack-of-all-trades, was agent at Siletz for most of the decade, and retained that position while filling in at Grand Ronde.
 In 1856, Simpson had been at Grand Ronde to build its mill, and had stayed on as owner-manager of the store and post office at the fort. He had even been elected to the legislature from there.
 In 1864, as agent at Siletz, he had been responsible for the defense of the Indians' fishing rights against the bullying poacher from California, and served on trouble-shooting missions throughout Western Oregon. Possibly, the legal actions resulting from this were a motive in removing him from that scene. His troubles at Siletz brought him accusations of "dabbling" in politics, and indeed, politics and journalism were important in his later years.
 A dynamic man, he rapidly took up the major problems left Condon left behind. His report indicates that he put everything into good order, except for the reservation school.

Amos Harvey 1864-1869

 The 65-year-old Amos Harvey was born in 1799. With plenty of experience behind him—especially in the milling and dyeing of wool—he crossed the Plains when he was 46. Harvey was a man of culture and immediately involved himself in school teaching. On his land, in Bethel, near Amity, he set up a plant nursery which became famous and led to his founding of a horticultural society.
 Bethel, located in a little vale called Plum Valley, was named in 1846 by the Rev. Glen O. Burnett for Bethel Church in Missouri where he served as pastor. Dr. Nathaniel Hudson settled nearby in 1851 and in 1852 opened Bethel Academy, a private undertaking. Bethel Academy was short lived. In 1854 Hudson moved to a new claim west of Dallas. In 1855 Burnett and Harvey organized a new school called Bethel Institute. A building was erected and the institute opened in October of that year. In January 1856, the legislature officially chartered the school with the name Bethel Institute and it operated with that name until October 1860, when the legislature granted a new charter with the name Bethel College. The college failed financially in 1861, and efforts to turn it over to the Christian Church were unsuccessful. Bethel Institute and Bethel College seem to have been community affairs and while the Christian Church gave moral support, it does not appear that the church actually furnished funds.
  Harvey also took a lead in organizing the Republican party in Polk County, but this political merit was probably less important to his appointment to the Indian Department than was his ability as a horticulturalist. His first appointment, in fact, was to the subagency near the Alsea River, where it was imperative to determine promptly what drops could be grown for subsistence of the Indians there. Serving well at that post, he was promoted to fill the vacancy at Grand Ronde, where he would be reappointed until reaching the age of 70.
 One problem that faced him at Alsea was that of Indians escaping down the coast to their old hunting and fishing grounds. Complaints were lodged by the anglo settlers, and it became Harvey's duty to retrieve them, at minimum cost to the government and with minimum loss of efficiency at the agency.
 In his journal, Bensell reports decision after decision on the part of Harvey and interprets each in a sense of unfeeling sternness, almost of self-interest. He wrote:

 Amos Harvey proves himself an old fogy. We have taken among the rest several infirm squaws which the agent proposes leaving behind to die because he says "it will cost so for transportation." [Louis] Herzer informed the agent if the squaws were left he (Herzer) would report him. This was the last thing desired by Harvey, and he is now making preparations to take the old ladies.

 But Harvey knew the limits of the available funds and the available time; he aired proposals for dealing with the older squaws and for making side trips to further possible hideouts, and these met with the disapproval of the lieutenant. Possibly, the lieutenant distorted Harvey's proposals when informing Bensell about them, but there is no denying the fact that the feet of the old squaws were leaving trails of blood on sharp rocks near the journey's end. On May 5 and 10, Bensell wrote of the distressing march of the old squaws back to Alsea:

By four o'clock the advance reached Winchester Bay and from that time 'till dark they came in by twos and threes, there are guards bringing in Old Fatty and Amanda... Amanda, who is blind, tore her feet horribly over these ragged rocks, leaving blood sufficient to track her by. One of the boys led her around the dangerous places.

Harvey, tough on himself, was even tougher on those under his charge.
 The problem of runaways plagued him again at Grand Ronde, more especially after the garrison at Fort Yamhill was removed and the agent had to provide a retrieving squad from his own personnel. To Harvey's surprise, the Indians themselves now rallied around him, for they recognized in his firm but fair manner something of the John McLoughlin they had earlier admired. Thus, with regard to the liquor traffic, and with no soldiers to scout for smugglers, it was the Indians themselves who gave information on the offenders and led to the prolonged elimination of the problem. When their mill dam broke, the Indians followed the lead of their 69-year-old agent, through snow and freezing water, to repair it, and demanded no pay beyond fodder for the horses they lent to the project.
 Beneath the surface of this unusual man lay his religious commitment. He had been reared a Pennsylvania Quaker, and would have remained such, had he not married Jane Rammage, who was not of that religious persuasion. Harvey found himself excommunicated, and was led to admire the newly founded Christian Church of the Campbellites, the Disciples of Christ. He was promptly made an elder of their church, and remained such all his life. Arriving in Oregon in 1855 and first settling on the North Yamhill River, Harvey promptly organized the first assembly of his adopted church west of the Rocky Mountains.
 Harvey gave, even beyond his means, to "help those who help themselves," and Bethel College and his fellow preachers were judged worthy recipients. For instance, when a winter supply of blankets went astray in San Francisco, Harvey bought replacements locally for those who would otherwise go cold. He did, however, take occasion of the blunder to unbraid the poor organization which had led to the fiasco.
 Agent Harvey felt the obligation to inculcate the virtues of foresight and self-reliance, and he strove to ensure that each farming group would retain seed grain for the next year's crop. He went further and lobbied for family farms, on which the head of each family would be directly responsible for its subsistence. For all his keenness on education, Harvey was fully aware of the futility of the day school; however, where others were content to lodge formal complaints, Harvey stepped in with a fait accomple, transferring the day teacher to a role of instructing the adults in methods of farming—an initiative which no one was to gainsay.
 Harvey no doubt was glad to see frustrated the plans for bringing nuns into his school in 1863, although it was Indian Affairs Superintendent J. W. Perit Huntington in Portland who was ruling out the use of nuns. A married man and a schoolteacher himself, he surely subscribed to the current enthusiasm for the manual labor model for Indian schools, with a married couple totally responsible for the children. Quite some months would pass however, before he would be able to engage other teachers—a couple highly recommended to him, the J. B. Clarks, who had pioneered well in the Siletz School.

Charles Lafollett 1869-1871

 The election of 1868 did not bring a change of party in the presidency, but it did bring an old soldier, Ulysses S. Grant, into the White House, who wished to make peace with the Indians by enlisting the aid of the churches. This policy was not announced, however, until late in 1870, and even then there was prolonged disagreement as to which church should have the right to nominate the agent at Grand Ronde. Harvey might have been left in office until these matters were settled, but age and the onset of his handicaps seem to have dictated otherwise. The place was therefore filled in 1866 by Charles Lafollett, the man who had captained the garrison of Fort Yamhill in its final days. An added motive seems to have lain in that Lafollett had recently served the party by running for a senatorship, which he had failed to win, and so was given this job instead. He brought with him to the job at least one of his company cronies, Lt. W. R. Dunbar, who would be teacher of his boarding school. Dunbar, had earlier taught at Siletz and elsewhere.
 Lafollett, one of the least attractive of the agents, had been the greatest adventurer among them. Of the same age as Miller and Condon, he had crossed the Plains in fear and dread of the Mormons, for his kin had had a hand in the murder of their prophet, Joseph Smith (1805-1844). Arriving in California, he promptly made a fortune on lumber and lost it on onions. He was a self-made school teacher and taught penmanship at college level, but his favorite occupation was Phrenology, the study of the bumps on the skull. He spent alternate seasons studying and lecturing on this fad of his day.
 He was also a self-taught lawyer. A strong stand for Prohibition won him three terms in the Oregon legislature. He was then given a mandate to raise a company of soldiers—which he did, by use of a $50 brass band. His military exploits were considered a success, at least by the mothers of the recruits, and his company was given further employment at Fort Yamhill.
 When made agent for the Indians, Lafollett was aware how tenuous was his hold on the office, and so he made no private expenditures even on his own home. But, with his rhetorical style or writing, his reports roll off estimates for needed repairs, quite oblivious that the federal government is severely cutting back on funds for the Indians, in view of the transfer of responsibility to the Indians themselves and to the churches. His was really a caretaker regime; indeed, with the deadlock in Washington, which assigned Grand Ronde to the Methodists but "left the Catholic mission undisturbed," Lafollett was allowed to stay on as an explicit compromise.
 Lafollett saw himself, however, as only answerable to the Catholics, whereas it was the Methodists of Oregon who began to make demands upon him. He refused outright to cooperate and had to resign. However, the Indians superintendent for Oregon at the time, Alfred B. Meacham, had strong belief in letting the Indians determine their own direction; still, a strongly anti-Catholic officer was sent from Washington to press the Methodist cause.

Patrick B. Sinnott (1872-1885)

 Patrick B. Sinnott, Grand Ronde's first Catholic agent, was 43 years old at the time he accepted the post. Like Condon, he was Irish-born, but unlike the Congregationalists, he had been destined for the Catholic priesthood and would have been sent to Saint Peter's Seminary college in Wexford County had it not been for the Potato Famine, which had begun in 1845.
 Arriving in New York in his late teens, Sinnott followed up opportunities in Chicago and then in California and Southern Oregon. He was unusually successful in seeking gold, and was able to stay at that task for more than a decade, though it involved abandonment of on site during the Indian Wars and also some personal involvement in the fighting. One source refers to him as "Major" Sinnott, a rank that would not be surprising in a man of his stature and personality, for he was tall and lanky, sociable, not too easily excited, and gifted with a dry humor.

Bridget Moran Sinnott

 In 1861, Sinnott sought out his brother in Illinois, who had experience in the hotel business, and he invested the earnings of his goldmining in a hotel partnership in Portland. The following year, he married Bridget Moran. Years later, after retirement from Grand Ronde, Sinnott is said to have personally collected some moneys owning him and to have set out on a visit to Ireland, only informing Bridget of the fact by postcard later. Bridget served as house mother to the school girls before the arrival of Catholic nuns, but it is not Sinnott who credits her with that in his reports. Bridget was a little taken aback one time, when she heard that the Coastal Indians had been generous to a collector of artifacts, for she had previously sent them a personal request for some and had it denied. She nevertheless found her place of honor among the nuns and white women of the area and was considered a charming hostess to visitors.
 Sinnott well understood that the government intended to cut back on his budget so as to force the Indians into self-reliance in preparation for citizenship. Thus there are none of Lafollett's unrealistic pleas for building funds. He does, however, keep a keen eye out for any revenue from owners of livestock that intrude on to their land, tolls from travelers to the coast who use the roads the Indians maintain, and proceeds from the lumber or flour produced at the mill.
 The Indians seemed to be at home with the former hotel keeper. What had attracted them to McLoughlin now attracted them to Sinnott—integrity and practicality, and were glad to have him host their Fourth of July celebrations and ceremonial receptions of guests.
 Sinnott's administration was not, however, without its opponents. Like his fellow Irishman, Condon, he found that a pouting predecessor had destroyed all records that could have guided his early administrative decisions.
 As for complaints against Sinnott stemming from the Indians, it is true that many had conceived hopes under the leadership of Meacham, which Sinnott found technically impossible, and so there was some measure of disappointment. There was general enthusiasm, however, over Sinnott's allotting of the land on a family basis instead of a tribal basis, but this led to a physical removal of many adult Indians from the direct influence of the old tribal chiefs, causing the prestige of the latter to wane and that of the elected representatives to become greater. Other agents were glad thus to weaken the chiefs, but Sinnott saw the matter differently: not a weakening of "corrupt" chiefs so much as a defusing of pointless intertribal rivalries. The new system made for a united Indian population at Grand Ronde as a whole.
 In his reports, Sinnott's Victorian English is rather wordy: he uses turns of phrase based on Latin syntax, but he gets them inside out—easy enough to follow, but grammatically incorrect. More importantly, Sinnott is fully aware of the nature of these public reports, and so he uses them largely for the correcting of rumors. There is none of Lafollett's nagging rhetoric when Sinnott pleads anew each year for some basic matters as the rights of the Coastal Indians, but he accommodates to what is forced upon him—for example, the removal, and later the restoration, of a resident physician, the denial of valid land titles to the Indian allottees, the ultimate forced dissolution of his esteemed Indian Court and the imposition of an Indian Police Force. He readily acknowledges that the Police Force, which he had long resisted, is of real help in prosecuting liquor smugglers, and he sees the Indians's ability to cope with alcohol as their one remaining obstacle to full citizenship.
 Further points of policy include the way in which he helped the Indians to make capital improvements on their allotted farms. He takes pride in their greater stability, and in their trips outside, on which they earn money to invest by improving their livestock and machinery. In 1878, he regretfully denies them passes for such work, since war is raging east of the Cascades and also Chinese laborers are getting the jobs the Indians would normally fill.
 The mills, put into good order by the Indians' volunteer labor under Meacham in 1871, remained productive throughout Sinnott's term, impeded only when funds were not enough to employ a miller fulltime. It was, however, Sinnott's policy to insist on non-indian control of the mills. Indeed, he even contemplated selling them off to individual whites, who would assume the "headaches" of keeping them in repair and would force the Indians to buy their services, just as ordinary citizens had to do.

Sister Mary Runs Dispensary

 The statistics are vague, but decline in population at Grand Ronde seems to have slowed down during Sinnott's years. It is interesting to note that the withdrawal of a resident physician, and the later installation of another, seem to have made little difference to the general health. Gradual improvement of sanitation, along with the spirit of optimism generated by the new policies of the early 1870s, seems to have been the best medicine all around. Sinnott himself, and especially Sister Mary of the Infant Jesus, filled in by running a dispensary. However, shamans were still well to the fore.
 Sinnott's eventual resignation, after 14 years of service and at the age of 56, stemmed not from lobbyists opposed to him but from the 1884 election of a Democratic president, Grover Cleveland (1837-1908). Even so, Sinnott continued on until the end of 1885. He was then given a four-year term as deputy marshall in the federal court system and, after that, he gave his full attention to managing his extensive real estate in the booming city of Portland. His surviving sons likewise went into real estate or law, and two of his descendants became priests.

John B. McClane 1886-1889

 By 1886, agents were no longer being nominated by the churches, but the one chosen for Grand Ronde 14 months after Sinnott's resignation would still cooperate wholeheartedly with the Catholic priest and sisters. This as 65-year-old John B. McClane, who had resided in Salem, almost without interruption, for the past 42 years and who was regarded almost as the city's founder.
 In Salem he had operated mills, stores, and the first post office, the state library, and the county treasury. He had married into one of the early Salem missionary families and raise nine children there. At Grand Ronde he would befriend an Indian couple whom he had known as children at the Salem Mission in 1843-1844.
 McClane regretted not being able, for lack of time, to mingle with the Indians more, but did go to very house for the annual census, and was unstintingly in his praise of the fences and vegetable gardens. There were some 400 persons when he took over, divided into 85 or 90 farming families. About 20 percent were half-bloods, and there were a number of absentees. There was no longer any way to force the absentees to return, but McClane was very concerned for the welfare of those who were out in the valley on temporary jobs, least they lose their wages on drink and gambling. He was gratified that, before the end of the term, new land allotments were made, with a fairer chance for the individual Indians to profit by the improvements they made on their own initiative.
 McClane's esteem and friendship for his Indian police, who doubled as an informal court, and some of whom held the key jobs in the shops, lend color to all his written reports. Although he needs an interpreter, McClane does communicate well with the ordinary Indians, thanks to the backing of this elite which surrounds him. Thus he is able to put a stop to many of the abuses surrounding deaths and inheritance and to much of the drinking and gambling.
 Funds were available to him, not only to supply food once when the hop picking had been unusually low, but also to do an almost complete rebuilding of the agency structures and fences, even providing boardwalks. Much of this work was done for the school, which he enlarged considerably.
 In his final report, McClure lavishes praise upon the newly arrived physician, Dr. Andrew Kershaw, a man of political views differing from his own, but most competent in his profession. Kershaw was later to succeed McClane at the head of affairs in Grand Ronde, using, indeed, a different style, but still admirable in his competence.

Thomas N. Faulconer 1889-1891

 The election of 1888 brought the Republican president William Henry Harrison (1773-1841) to power, with apparently a less generous budget for the Indian Department. In the following September, the energetic old McClane was therefore replaced by a local farmer and storekeeper, Thomas N. Faulconer. Faulconer also served as postmaster in 1866.
 Aged 59 and a resident in the Sheridan area for most of the previous 22 years, Faulconer stepped in quietly, acknowledged the value of McClane's improvements and apparently did nothing unusual on his own. His main praise is for Andrew Kershaw, who is thoroughly "ingratiating himself" with the Indians. Kershaw was living in the newly built physicians quarters, but one may well suppose that Faulconer continued to reside at his own farm, as Miller had done decades before. This would explain his seemingly minimal involvement at the reservation.

Edward F. Lamson 1891-1893

 The motives for Faulconer's withdrawal have no been published, but they may have been connected with the "considerable sickness" suffered at Grand Ronde in the winter of 1890-1891. This sickness brought Dr. Kershaw ever more to the fore, to the neglect of the shamans, and perhaps to the embarrassment of an agent scarcely able to handle the bureaucratic problems of obtaining emergency supplies.
 The choice for a substitute, however, was again to fall upon a local farmer—in fact, upon one locally born. This was Edward F. Lamson, the son of Jeremiah Lamson, who had taken up land in the Willamina Valley at a very early date, and served as postmaster in 1863.
 This is the family which the younger R. W. Summers encountered in 1853, whose fascinating story he tells in his journal:

 When Jeremiah was in California for gold, and failed to return for the winter, his young wife was informed that he was dead; but the winter was already too far advanced for her to move out to live with relatives; to her horror, she was approached by Tillamook braves, which used to winter in that valley; but, lo and behold, their only intention was to provide the little family with Indian food throughout the winter; then, in the spring, to the mother’s delight, Jeremiah, never really dead, returned. The family lived in the area ever since.

 Edward F. Lamson married young and had seven children when, at the age of 40, he took over at the agency. He found the basic workforce, established by Meacham and Sinnott and perfected by McClane, quite satisfactory, and so he gave his attention to his own field of expertise, which was farming. He, like Sinnott, was much vexed by rumors among the Indians that their titles were not valid; also, blame was laid on him for any complaints the whites had about the Indians' conduct; but, undaunted, he made a thorough, independent inventory of the land. He cleared new land and got the Indians, almost for the first time, to fallow some of the old. He taught them to choose the seed to suit each piece of ground. He encouraged them to phase out the ponies and to build up their 400 horses, 700 cattle, many pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys.
 Lamson paired up with Dr. Kershaw in much the same way as McClane had teamed up with his elite Indian Police Force, or even as Sinnott had paired up with the Catholic priest.
 An early crisis regarded the manual labor teacher for the boys, who was an Indian. Lamson demanded that he take a more aggressive role, and so precipitated his resignation. Then he appealed to higher authority to have the position reserved for a man by the name of Whitman. Six months dragged by without a male teacher, and it seems the older boys took occasion to quit school. But Lamson was content with the eventual appointee, John Callaghan. What made matters worse was that Washington had just then imposed a new curriculum, which itself demanded the Sisters' full attention.
 To his credit, Lamson provided the school with a much needed new laundry building, but funds failed for other needed improvements.
 Lamson's term came to an end because of the reelection of Grover Cleveland in 1892.

John F. Theodore Brentano 1893-1896

 When the Democrats won the 1892 election, another Catholic, John F. Theodore Brentano, was chosen as agent. The self-taught expert in law had been Saint Paul's first postmaster in 1874.
 Brentano's father, who was from the northernmost part of The Netherlands, practiced medicine and obstetrics in his homeland and then in Kansas and California, and delivered most of the infants in the Saint Paul area until the turn of the century. They were a happy, dependable family, fond of practical jokes, ready to forgive debts and fervent in parish life.
 Brentano took up his duties in August 1893, but it is not clear when his term ended. Government policy had been changing rapidly, and the lands were being parceled out in preparation for opening the rest of the reservation to anglo settlement. The duties of the agent at Grand Ronde were thus shrinking, and it was decided to create a new office, that of superintendent of the school, which would involve a few additional duties around the remaining lands. This new position was given to Dr. Andrew Kershaw, a highly educated man, well accepted by the Indians.
 Like his immediate predecessors, Brentano had at first felt happy with the existing corps of employees, but he soon had to dismiss two of the policemen, for illness or neglect. Unfortunately, Washington did not recognize the value of the Court of Indian Offences and so, instead of helping it as Brentano had wished, they suppressed it altogether.
 To Brentano, a self-made expert in the law, this suppression was doubly tragic, for he found the outside courts inadequate. These argued that the Indians with allotted lands were citizens and could, for instance, drink what they wished and not be prosecuted for drunkenness or liquor smuggling. What the courts really meant was that, since the Indians did not yet pay taxes, they would not yet enjoy protection by way of the public prosecution of crimes against them. The same held for an adulterer. His case was declared merely civil, to be prosecuted only at the victim's expense. At Siletz, even murder of an Indian by an Indian was likewise dismissed. Divorce lawyers wrought havoc on the rights of abandoned wives, and Brentano incurred much odium for his prosecution of the worst bigamists.
 Already in Brentano's time the ambiguities of family ties among those allotted land were causing disputes over inheritance. Added to this, the elderly, some of whom had the best and, were refusing to lease it to the more able bodied. In addition to the elderly, there was a class which Brentano refers to as loafers and drunkards, who hung around the agency idle. He is glad to report that they are a minority, but he regrets to report the factionalism of another minority, the half-bloods. The old clans were forgotten, but fullbloodedness was still a thing of pride and a bargaining point in seeking employment. Then too, there was a resurgence of the shamans, and the only disciplinary action Brentano could against them was to threaten not to issue them any supplies.
 Perhaps most symptomatic of the changing times, the Indians refused to take Brentano's advice against going to fairs to perform their ancient dances for a fee. To modern minds, this is a debasing of a noble heritage, while to Brentano it was a risk of falling back into Old Beliefs. This entire backfiring of the policy of allotment had been foreseen by Meacham years before, but it was Brentano who had to bear the odium of struggling to offset its worst ills.
 Brentano's term ended not with his resignation, but with the phasing out of his job in 1896.

Dr. Andrew Kershaw 1896-1909

 Andrew Kershaw was originally appointed as superintendent of the school, some time in 1896, with only minor duties in regard to the reservation as a whole. In 1899, however, Kershaw began to report also on the agency in general, and therefore takes his place among the cavalcade of agents.
 Kershaw, a Congregationalists, was born near Manchester, England, but migrated at the age of four and had his first memories amid the martial music of the Civil War. Soldiering was his only interest until, at the age of nine, a troop train injured his leg, which had to be amputated just below the knee. This tragic accident prompted his change of interests to the study of medicine, though he married a Civil War general's daughter.
 At the age of 30, Kershaw joined the Indian Department and served for three years around Tulalip, Washington, coming from there in 1889 to replace an impractical physician at Grand Ronde. His prestige as a healer among the Indians, along with the respect shown him by the agents, led to his ever greater identification with the welfare of the reservation. Moreover, from 1891 onwards he began to invest his money around nearby Willamina in a store, timberland, the railroad and a brickworks—all of which rendered him immensely rich in later years.
 His reports, written in 1906, which such details as population, crop yields, and care of the sick and elderly. Occasionally new matters came up that disturbed him.
 Some of the new matters were connected with the ceding of large tracts of land to the federal government in 1901. Many of the elderly also wished to sell their own lots so as to have money for their final years, and they accused the Indian Department of avarice in refusing to allow it. When white families did thus buy, however, Kershaw optimistically hoped that their settling amid the Indians would provide good example of family farming.
 Without any Court of Indian Offences to rely upon, the doctor himself amicably settled most squabbles, but the smuggling of whiskey was still hard to deal with. Generally, however, there is much progress to mention, such as new houses built or a new resource to exploit in the selling of cascara bark or of basketry. Although in 1899, the doctor proudly announces that an Indian man has taken over the old anglo stronghold at the famous mill, and that he is reputed to get more flour per bushel of wheat than any miller before him. As for the roads, subject to much injustice in Brentano's day, a new law made it possible for Kershaw to run an election—with Republicans, Democrats, but excluding tribal factions—to elect a surveyor and district manager of the road repair.
 In 1909, aged only 54, Kershaw went into retirement at Willamina, but remained active in civic affairs. He identified strongly with the IOOF and with the Elks.

Chapter 54: Mission Grand Ronde

 Fourteen years after his ordination in Belgium, the brilliant Fr. Adrian Joseph Croquette (1818-1902) was worried that he would be promoted to some prestigious job. It was the year 1859 and he began to hear that a college had been founded at his old Louvain University for preparing priests to go and serve in America. He applied and was welcomed.
 After a few months of studying English and learning about New World culture, he was tentatively assigned to Mississippi. He was glad to see this soon changed to the even needier Oregon. Then came a message to hasten his departure, for his archbishop was to be in New York with a group of Canadian recruits, priests, Sisters and lay servants, and he was to go West in their company.
 Tender concern for his family's grief made him fill this period with letters home, most of which survive. His Atlantic crossing was slow and he had time only to say mass in New York before setting out with the other recruits for Panama.
 On board with them was the nation's highest military officer, Gen. Winfield Scott (1786-1866), familiarly known as "Old Fuss and Feathers." Scott made much of the sisters, coaxing them to give concerts and to accept tropical drinks at is expense. He finally revealed that a daughter of his had shared their way of life. On deck kin the evenings, Fr. Croquette heard him tell of his old Mexican War, but also of the more recent Rogue River Wars of Oregon, and of the reservations set up after them.
 The archbishop too had his deck-chair stories: how in the 1830s, Rocky Mountain Indians had sent to Saint Louis for Blackrobes, and Canadian ex-trappers in Oregon had sent home for himself. He told of his thrill as he crossed the crest of the Rockies and offered the first mass in the Oregon Country. What most impressed Fr. Croquette was the role of Fr. Pierre Jean De Smet (1801-1873) and the Jesuits in the tribes beyond white contact, and the present needs of Oregon's own Snake River bands.
 Fr. Brouillet, another pioneer, was also with them, and told of the Whitman Massacre and the setbacks it had brought. As for the three orders of nuns on board, all founded by the bishop of Montreal, Fr. Croquette was so retiring that their printed account of the trip does not mention him. Of course, they had an assigned chaplain, who saw to their needs.
 Of the priests coming with him, he saw the most of Fr. Fabian Malo. The others had been given to understand they would be working with the whites, but Fr. Malo's heart was with the Indians. In the early 1860s, these two would see much of each other, for Fr. Malo would be stationed at Saint Paul, where Fr. Croquette could make a monthly visit to him. The two would also join forces for the early missionary expeditions along the coast. Years later, Fr. Malo left to do the full time work with the Indians of the Dakotas.
 Entering the tropics, the menfolk slept on the open deck. It was a restful month for the archbishop, who could lean back and dream of a brighter future, like the prophets of the Babylonian Exile. And all of the joys of that long voyage, one of the greatest was his discovery of his little recruit from Belgium. For more than 20 years to come, the two would be joined in an unclouded friendship, not intimate in a personal sense, but with unbounded mutual trust in things divine.

Aground at Key West

 The missionary band on the steamer was the Catholic Church of Oregon in nucleus. It told its story and dreamed its deck-chair dreams, but its fervor needed another form of expression—worship of its God.
 The ship’s captain and his wife, who were both Catholic, arranged for the Sisters to sing their hearts out each evening. On Sunday, the deck was cleared for the archbishop to say mass and for Fr. Brouillet to give a sermon.
 But no liturgical expression on the trip equaled that of the coaling station of Key West—a mass at the tip of the continent. All passengers were looking forward to an afternoon on this tropical island. Gen. Scott, of course, had to parade off to the fort. His agust presence dampened those who looked forward mainly to the saloons. Children would romp and adults would tour, but the missionary band would head for Star of the Sea Church.
 Such plans took a jolt at 3am, for the ship ran aground. Some were terrified; others, furious. The captain took soundings; the wind dropped; they found a way out. Arriving at 5pm, most found their plans all ruined. But for the missionaries, it was ideal.
 As soon as the brass bands marched the general's suite away, the missionaries strolled up the street to the church. Of the 3,000 inhabitants of the town, many—including some of 600 Spanish-speaking Africans—were Catholic, but had not had a priest for six months. Spotting the motley procession amid the waving palm branches, these welcomed them, gave them gifts of tropical fruit, and spread word of their arrival.
 Evening masses were not allowed in those days, but the missionaries had no trouble spending the hours in church, and local Catholics eagerly joined them.
 Meanwhile, the family that kept the sacred vessels send maids—slave and free—scurrying to gather up enough cups and saucers to serve everyone tea. An evening lecture about their guests’ missionary goals was scheduled, and men of the parish hastened to invite a myriad of people, including the Methodist minister. They came undistracted by the general's fanfare.
 Many lingered devoutly in church, and the priests heard confessions and offered individual consolation. Only at 11pm did they leave, and they were back at 3:30am for mass.
 African boys set candles to flicker in the breeze until the tropical sunrise lit the windows up. An awesome hush prevailed, though one could hear a few skirts swish or a rosary rattle. There was the rumble of the priest's Latin; there were outbursts of song from the nuns; but then the little bell, and all dove to their knees. Further tinklings, then came communion at last.
 At 7am, the ship's whistle blew, and missionaries scurried back on board for her departure.

Apprenticeship in the Oregon Country 1859

 Even though he was 41 years old and 15 years a priest on his arrival in Oregon, Fr. Croquette had another apprenticeship to serve: he had to be initiated to the Oregon Country.
 Based in Oregon City with the archbishop, he was sent for weeks on end to Saint Paul, Vancouver and The Dalles, catering to those who preferred an outside priest for their yearly confessions and learning the needs of all.
 The California Gold Rush drew away most of Oregon's Catholic clergy, and in 1853, it reached its lowest ebb. But Fr. Croquette was stepping into a new springtime. One link with old-times, however, was his part at the funeral of Marguerite Wadin McKay McLoughlin, widow of Fort Vancouver's chief factor. She had many injustices to forgive, and the tact of the nursing Sisters won her heart to forgive all before she died.
 Fr. Croquette's heart lay with the Indians and he was assigned to care for such as came to Willamette Falls at Oregon City to fish. After Easter, he went to The Dalles and made a long Indian tour with veteran Fr. Toussaint Mesplie as his guide.
 Fr. Mesplie was popular with the braves and with the army. He reminded the apprentice priest that there was no etiquette for Indian lodges: no knock on the door, no being told where to sit, but just to take one's turn at the calumet and "be at home."
 Their visit to each lodge was necessarily brief, since most of their time was spent locating individual Indians. A word or two about raids by hostile Indians, or about the salmon run was followed by the hurried baptism of infants and a moment with the dying before departure.

A Hanging in Lafayette

 In September 1860, Fr. Croquette received his definitive assignment: residing at Grand Ronde Agency, he would serve the Indians of that Reservation, of its neighbor Siletz, and of the coast as far as he could reach; in addition he would serve the non-indians of Polk and Yamhill counties.
 Lafayette in 1863 was still the seat of Yamhill County, and it was there that the strong-armed blacksmith, John Zebulon Griffin, was tried and hanged for killing a man, allegedly in self defense.
 Griffin was of no particular religion, and though the local minister visited him, he specifically asked for a Catholic priest. Fr. Croquette came and loaned him literature, which convinced the convict to embrace the faith. Fr. Malo of Saint Paul was enlisted to alternate in visiting and instructing Griffin for baptism. On Sunday, June 7, 1863, both priests joined forces to be with their "dead man walking" almost constantly until the appointed hour of execution.
 The final morning, Fr. Croquette said mass in prison, gave Griffin first communion and, delegated by the archbishop, confirmed him. Both priests accompanied him to the scaffold, where he eagerly joined them in prayer.
 The crowd was impressed by the worship going on between the two shabby priests and their prisoner, some declaring they must study a religion as effective as that.

Early Contacts in Tillamook County

 When the Indians of Western Oregon were put on reservations, the Coastal Indians of the Tillamook, Nestucca and Salmon rivers remained free. Soon, however, anglos encroached and these Indians, who had often wintered in the tributaries of the Yamhill, looked to Grand Ronde for help. Records of Tillamook baptisms are found in the Baptismal Register from 1861, and from 1865, Fr. Croquette, via a variety of routes, traveled to Tillamook Bay to visit them.
 The Salmon Rivers were easy to access, but Fr. Croquette found it harder to reach the Nestuccas. Old Chief Kiwanda's family, for whom the cape is named, appears in 1868. Only in the 1890s do whites replace Indians in that area, and the name Woods replaces Nestucca. But Tillamook is a settlement from the start, and whites are mingled with Indians. In 1874, Fr. Croquette travels his furthest north, blessing a marriage at Garibaldi.
 Netarts Bay comes on to his agenda in 1876, with Elizabeth and Patrick Moore as his hosts. Next year Elizabeth Moore lay dying and the family called him over to give her the last rites and bury her. Six years later, he did the same for the son of William C. O'Hara, for whom O'Hara Creek is named.
 The first mass in Tillamook County took place Sunday, October 20, 1867, following the baptism of Indian Cecile and the regularizing of her union with Portuguese Joe Thompson. This occurred on Joe Creek, at present-day Pleasant Valley. Formerly called Nestocton, Fr. Croquette identifies the place as Natach. Also present were Josephine Deschamps, the Indians Betsy and James, Jenny and Timothy Goodall, and a person named Provost.

Salmon River Visits 1871-1872

 In 1871-1872, when the Methodist veto was first excluding Fr. Croquette from the Siletz Reservation proper, a radical change came about in the nature of his visits to the Salmon River. No longer did he have to scramble from lodge to lodge so as to reach off the new babies and instruct any adults who were dangerously ill. By now he was personally acquainted with the various families within reach, and there existed a firm bond of mutual trust. Back at Grand Ronde, he was preparing to have his old leaders receive the sacrament of confirmation; down here on the coast, he could now spare the time to instruct and baptize the older, more stable couples, especially the chiefs. Moreover, as parishioners from Grand Ronde were often on hand at the mouth of the Salmon, he could have them act as godparents. Thus, in August 1872, he baptized Indian Skyller who was a pillar of the faith. Setting this event for the Feast of Our Lady's Assumption, and having on hand quite a crowd from Grand Ronde and a representative of the Catholic Sentinel, Fr. Croquette decided that a great "tufty" tree on Devils Lake, close to the beach, was a worthy site, and so he rigged up an altar of cedar planks split with stone wedges and had the people bring reed mats and don their best ornaments of shell and bartered buttons. Skyller probably pulled his canoe ashore to enrich the scene; it meant much to him to renounce the old custom of being buried in his canoe, hoisted aloft in the branches of a tree.
 Skyller's wife Charlotte was not ready for baptism until October, but their adopted daughter shared the rite this day. There was nothing very original in the ceremony; the beautiful lake was not used for the baptism, but a dirty old basin carried in Fr. Croquette's grubby mass kit. But they enjoyed the bell and joined with gusto in the singing of hymns.
 Around Christmas of 1875, he baptized the chiefs of the Salmon Rivers and Nestuccas, when these were visiting Grand Ronde. In the meantime, a biracial community of Catholics was forming around Tillamook Bay, and adult baptisms there became quite usual. With the new policy on baptism came a new one also on the mass: The holy sacrifice now became the regular climax of any coastal visit.

Fr. Croquette Revisits Joe Thompson 1877

 In 1877, Fr. Croquette, having lost his way to Netarts Bay, happened upon the small clearing where Joe Thompson lived. His nephew, Francis Mercier, was with him and left a description of the event. Thompson, then 41, rushed to kneel and kiss his pastor's hand. Finding his uncle from the Azores boring, Mercier compares Fr. Croquette to Robinson Crusoe for the oddity of his garb, and his language barrier that probably left him psychologically marooned. Mercier and a newly arrived priest who had accompanied the old priest, did not bother to ride on to the store and inn that then constituted the town of Tillamook, but caught up on lost sleep and planned for an early departure home.

Tillamook Bay Visits 1890

 In 1889, Fr. Croquette took his long deserved vacation in Belgium, and while he was away another priest took over at Siletz. In 1890, the northern communities around Tillamook Bay were visited by the archbishop, accompanied by Fr. Croquette. Confirmations were conferred and the decision was made to assign them a resident pastor. In 1892, a similar visit paid to the Siletz Reservation, where eight men and nine women were confirmed. This was Fr. Croquette's last visit, and he made it via the inland route, in order to meet up with the archbishop’s party at the train. Somehow it was learned that, when the 74-year-old missionary had stopped at a farmhouse en route to ask for lodgings, he was refused, as being a foreigner. Thus, as on so many earlier trips, a spreading tree was his roof for the night.

Grand Ronde Schools 1862-1908

 Education for the children was one of the needs provided for in the treaties with the tribes, and so Grand Ronde was entitled to one boarding school, with emphasis on manual training, and one day school. In practice, however, both schools faced enormous problems, which no one took a lasting interest in solving until Fr. Croquette obtained his convent school.
 The fact is that, despite enormous odds, most of the Indians were undergoing a rapid learning process, which was equipping them for a new way of life, but this learning was occurring not in the classroom but in the casual contacts with off reservation employers.
 Children and parents alike were eager to have the teachers take the pupils in and spruce them up in "Boston" clothing, but once the novelty had worn off, attendance would drop dramatically. Moreover, any new behavior patterns acquired at school would be discarded as soon as the children got home in the evening. Thus the authorities unanimously declared that the boarding school, with emphasis on manual labor skill building, was the only practical program for Grand Ronde, and that the funds of both schools should be consolidated to that end.
 But to run a boarding school called for a decent building, and that needed an appropriation by Congress, which was not forthcoming. Year after year, agents would patch up the only available dwelling and use an old lean-to as a classroom. The teachers deplored the leaking roof, the "see-through" walls and the rotting foundations, but the Indians' objection was even stronger: the old building had once served as a hospital and it was irreverent to those who had died there that it be used to other ends and not burned to the ground.
 Failing to secure a new building, each poor teacher had to begin anew to win the confidence of a few parents. He or she had to assure them that, though many children had died at earlier mission schools, this school need not bring death to theirs. And though it was well known that alumni of those old schools had become notorious as villains, such need not happen at Grand Ronde.
 Perhaps the biggest obstacle to educating young Indians was the language barrier. They were very gifted at manual crafts and at memorization of English texts and music, but they had difficulty expressing themselves on a theoretical level in the language of their conquerors. Most teachers regarded the Chinook jargon they spoke as something quite as barbaric as the flea-ridden rags in which they were first brought to school.
 The very first teachers at Grand Ronde, Mary and John Ostrander, who were probably engaged by Joel Palmer, taught amidst great frustration in 1856-1857. They did not have the advantage of boarding the children, but taught in two separate day schools near temporary encampments. The transfer of whole tribes out of immediate reach of the schools made for dramatic drops in attendance. The couple had the highest motivation and Mary labored ceaselessly to provide garments as inducements for the children to attend, but student motivation flagged more and more. Eventually there occurred an epidemic, and the medicine women diagnosed it as stemming from the bugle John had been using as a sporting gesture in place of a bell to call classes in session. The Ostranders express their defeat with touching meekness.
 The C. M. Sawtelles, who taught at the school from 1862-1863, broke through the bigoted white prejudice. Brilliant educators, they were perfectly content to speak to the children in English and allow them to reply in Chinook jargon.
 The Sawtelles appointed one of the mothers to act as teaching assistant in domestic skills. Not only did they win the confidence of children and parents alike, but the families left the reservation for food gathering trips, the students gladly stayed on and finished up the term. Under the Sawtelles, new applications were more numerous than space allowed.
 In 1866-1867, after some difficulty in finding teachers, agent Amos Harvey (1864-1869) engaged the J. B. Clarks, who had shown resourcefulness in the very primitive conditions at Siletz.
 Around 1870, the school was abandoned most of the time, possibly on account of the new federal policy, in which reservations were to be assigned to churches and there was dispute as to which church should have Grand Ronde. Nevertheless, the W. R. Dunbars did their best to salvage the situation for 1869-1870, gathering 14 students into the boarding school and ten into the day school.
 After the Dunbars, came the resignation of agent Charles Lafollett (1869-1871), and the appointment of a Catholic agent, Patrick B. Sinnott (1872-1785). Very shortly, an Irish bachelor, James Donnelly, and the role of house mother was filled by Bridget Sinnott. A break was made with the old "embarrassing" classroom, and the new, purpose-built one soon attracted all it could hold—about 50 students. And then, in April 1874, came the nuns.

Convent School 1872-1900

 A Convent School was agreed upon in 1863, but local forces managed to block it. The resistance in 1871 was overcome by superintendent Alfred B. Meacham's removal from office in December and by archbishop Bertrand Blanchet’s vigorous lobbying through Frs. Brouillet and Mesplie in Washington.
 The nuns successively serving at Grand Ronde were from several distinct orders of nuns, the first being the Holy Names Sisters, founded in French Canada for the education of city girls. From their first arrival in 1874, these Sisters had pressed the need for a more healthy building for the girls and themselves, and also a building for the boys.
 Most of the things looked for by Meacham and Brunot were efficiently provided by the Sisters: the children were trained in the habits of cleanliness and thrift that would be essential if they were to mix as citizens with white society. Visitors, and most notably the Protestant general, O. O. Howard, expressed admiration also for the classroom work, noting that the boys did better in academics but were inferior to the girls in deportment.
 What the Indians looked for in the school was a little different. They were keen on manual training for the boys, but the Sisters were never able to retain a male instructor to give the boys consistently the same standard of service as the girls. More significant is what the Indians dreaded in a boarding school: epidemics of psychosomatic illness. The parents of prospective pupils took up the question on the morrow of the Sisters' arrival, and their broken English was not adequately reassuring. The illnesses did occur; the Indians laid the blame on factors envisaged by native medicine, but the Sisters blamed it on the poor insulation and inadequate heating of the living quarters. Each year would see fewer freshmen join them.
 Washington DC was deaf to requests for a new building, and the Sisters' superiors gave an ultimatum: without a new school building, they would withdraw their services. Fr. Croquette took a two-year advance on his $100 annual salary and begged the rest from the only source responsive to him, his former confessor, past of Salem, Fr. Goens, now back in Belgium.
 No sooner was the new building in use than the excellent Holy Names Sisters were withdrawn, for health or for pressing needs elsewhere.
 Fortunately, by this time, Fr. Brouillet, who had been on the ship with Fr. Croquette's party in 1859, was in charge of the Bureau of Indian Missions in Washington DC, where he was in a position to contact other nuns who could help. He first obtained a group of five from Minnesota, who arrived in April 1881, and gathered 35 pupils, aged five through 26. They were under the jurisdiction of an abbot near Saint Cloud, and when this prelate saw the harsh conditions in which they were working, he broke off the contract and withdrew them, at the beginning of January 1882. The abbot's intention had been to found twin monasteries in the West, one of monks and one of nuns, and these Sisters at Grand Ronde were to have been something of a spearhead for that; but the buildings, the climate, with its rain, and the coming of other Benedictines to Gervias and Mount Angel, prompted him to change his plans and withdraw the spearhead.
 Archbishop Seghers then made a dramatic plea to prior Adelhelm, founder of Mount Angel, who was about to leave for Europe, that he should find some other Benedictine Sisters to fill the gap. He stopped off in Missouri and first obtained some of his own Swiss compatriots residing there. The exact sequence of events is hard to reconstruct from the surviving records, but it seems that three Sisters were sent at once, led by Sister Mary Agnes Dali, who had been stationed at Maryville, Missouri.
 Sister Agnes, in her early 40s, had earlier been given special opportunities for higher studies in drawing, painting and needlework while still in Switzerland and had, during her six or seven years in America, gained much practical experience in pioneering convent schools. In later years she would do outstanding work on every level, from menial chores and running a free school for African Americans (which was threatened with arson) to being the first elected superior of her kind in the country and taking charge of the training of young nuns. Apart from this artistic and administrative talent, she was a woman after Fr. Croquette's own heart; small in stature and robust in health, stinting herself in food and sleep but lavishing her goods on the poor and her leisure time on prayer.
 Records of her stay are few, but two details are known: The Sisters obtained new horses and cows for the school farm, run by the boys, and obtained the services of a former companion of Fr. Croquette, Marcus Richard, who later became a lay Benedictine brother, to refurnish the chapel.
 When prior Adelhelm returned from Europe, he brought two other groups of nuns from Switzerland: those intended for Gervias and Mount Angel, and those who end up in Cottonwood, Idaho. These latter lingered in Oregon for a while, to learn the language, and so he sent relays of them to Grand Ronde to help Sister Agnes' group with the manual labor. A layman was provided for the boys. By the fall of 1884, the Mount Angel Sisters were ready to take over from Sister Agnes' team, and the school got properly under way. Sister Agnews served thereafter in Oklahoma.

Nuns Provide Stability for Students

 In contrast with earlier teachers, the nuns provided a stability of personnel and a determination to obtain a better building; but they also brought with them a handicap in regard to language and in caring for the male students. Their annual reports have not been published, and their own Journals are mainly anonymous in regard to the children. In fact, not many regular families persevered in sending their children to the Sisters, but those which did, including the Sinnotts themselves, saw their children grow into an elite.
 For the Sisters brought reforms into the children's lives which there would be no going back upon. These were the nonverbal lessons, stressed in Sinnott's reports: habits of neatness and courtesy, skills with vocal and instrumental music. Artwork is not much mentioned, but decoration is, and at least the girls would have become tasteful adorners of their homes.
 True, this is the kind of "cleanliness" that colonialism thought "next to godliness," and the nuns were to joke that Fr. Croquette's rooms and clothing showed no more interest in it than did the grubbiest of the Indian families, but it would have been unauthentic in the nuns to try to initiate the children into their own spiritual world without all this earnest investment in grooming.
 The Sisters’ world of the convent, unfenced though it was, existed in isolation from the public. Their days were filled with the chores modern conveniences have long since eliminated—fetching water from the well, splitting wood, laundering by hand, sewing each stitch by the dim light of a window. Highlights there were, which are mentioned in the convent Journal, but there is also a dull daily background, taken for granted but seeping into the child's soul: the Angelus bell, the rattling rosary, the grace before meals, the morning and evening prayers. There is the hush in passing by the chapel door, the fetching of a hat in order to enter, the genuflection before taking one's spot to kneel.
 But how much of this hothouse piety could the children be expected to take home? That depended on how deeply they make it their own school and also on what kind of foundation existed at home upon which they could graft their new measure of fervor. The Journal has a keen eye to distinguish those devotions that grip the children and those that do not.
 Above all, the children took home the liturgical calendar by which the nuns had lived. There were "countdowns" to the big feasts, though, oddly, little was made of Lent and Advent.
 The Indians had to build their own Christian spirituality; it was not for the nuns to hazard connections between the Old Religion and the new, between the ancestral landmarks and the new house of prayer, between the native sense of seasons and the Christian feasts. Thus we do not find the nuns leading the children on pilgrimages to set up a cross atop Spirit Mountain, or attempting to connect the berry season with some patron saint. They leave it to the Indians to discover such connections for themselves later on. In the meantime, they do not even teach them American civil history: the officialdom of the agency undertakes that, with plenty of expenditure and fanfare, on the Fourth of July.
 What the Nuns do offer, or rather, what the communicate by osmosis, is not so much a new patriotism as a new sense of belonging to the little convent community, to the parish, to the archdiocese, to the Catholic church. Officialdom seeks to detribalize the Indians; the Sisters give them, not a new tribal loyalty, but an integration into a loving community. When the leave school, the same bonds of love will grow within the families they will found, and between the families within the parish. The hospitality the Sisters show the visiting clergy and superiors teaches the children to add an openness to their warmth. The care the Sisters lavish on the children in illness teaches them the measure for future family commitment.
 The imparting of these values by the Sisters was not jeopardized by the poor quality of their English or their lack of Chinook, and there is no evidence that any harm came to the boys. A renowned visitor, Gen. O. O. Howard, remarked that the boys were less neat than the girls, but that the boys were scholastically more advanced. They did, at times under the Sisters, have male instruction in manual skills, especially from Patrick Lynch of Willamina, and the daily chores then learned were carried on at all times. Nor was the element of sport lacking, for the sons of agent Sinnott made a lifelong boast of the scars left by games of "co-ho" or "shinney," a kind of hockey played with the Indian boys. Several male pupils, permitted to use a nearby barn as sleeping quarters in order to attend school, prized their schooling too much to abandon it even in the severest winter. Long decades later, old men around the parish boasted of their early privilege of going to the "Sister's School."

1884 Election Brings in More Generous Funds

 Much as the Indians loved the nuns, the changes of personnel had made them dubious about sending their children to school and the enrollment was rebuilt only slowly. A major change came, however, with the presidential election of 1884, which brought in a Democratic administration, more generous with funds for Indians. The election also prompted the replacement of agent Sinnott by John B. McClane, who served from January 1886 to September 1889. This gentleman was apparently not Catholic, but was very cooperative with the nuns. By this time, the principal was American born, as was her assistant teacher.
 More generous federal funds were soon followed by federal regulations, made in a secularist direction. At first the changes were only by way of material improvements, but in 1891 the new agent, T. N. Faulconer, who served from September 1889 to January 1891, took it upon himself to dismiss an Indian overseer of the boys for a lack of leadership. The management of the boys did remain a problem for most of this period, and at one stage there was no male teacher for months on end, and the principal had to cope with 60 pupils in a single room. One Benedictine lay brother proved incompetent outside the classroom, but John Callahan was found satisfactory for some time.
 In the early days of the Mount Angel nuns, the freshmen students still had difficulty with English, just as the parents still dealt somewhat with the medicine men. Manual skills and memorization still outweighed abstract thinking. The strong points in the classroom were the less linguistic ones: penmanship, drawing and music (both vocal and instrumental). The boys had a brass band; some girls played the organ.
 The election of 1892 again went to the Democrats, and Fr. Croquette took occasion to lobby for a Catholic agent. It took some months, but his candidate, John F. Brentano (1893-1896) of Saint Paul, was eventually appointed and gave his utmost support to the Sisters and to Fr. Croquette. Unfortunately there then existed some loopholes in the legal system, which frustrated his efforts at reform in such matters as sales of liquor and bigamy. It is not indicated in published documents how or exactly when Brentano’s term came to an end, but he was out of office by April 1896.
 Already congress had decided to phase out the "sectarian" school system on the reservations, and, in the case of Grand Ronde, to phase out the agency altogether. Thus Brentano's successor, Dr. Andrew Kershaw (1896-1909), was not strictly an agent, but his jurisdiction over the school was greater than in the past, on account of the repeal of the church's control.
 The new administrator was chosen with great care: A Republican, a Protestant, one employed already for quite some years at Grand Ronde as its physician. His competence and dedication had been praised by successive agents before him, including Brentano.
 The immediate changes made by Kershaw in the school were the replacement of two of the nuns by protestant teachers. One of these, Eugenie M. Edwards, at least in 1897 and for the next several years, acted as matron, with charge of all household arrangements. Another change was the sending of half a dozen senior students each year to Chemawa Indian School in Salem. A major change in Kershaw's second year was to combine the boys' and girls' dining rooms and to set them up in what one parent called "hotel" style. Meanwhile, the Sisters retained the two posts for teaching the girls in the classrooms and remained responsible for the major entertainments.

Sisters Replaced by Protestant Principal 1899-1900

 Throughout the 1890s, the average attendance was increasing, from 60 to 90 students, but, given the yearly transfer to Chemawa, the number soon began to decrease, and so did the average age. With these large numbers of mouths to feed, the number of employees also increased—until there were 11.
 At the end of the 1899-1900 school year, the teaching Sisters were replaced by Cora B. Egeler as principal and Luther Parker as second teacher. Dr. Kershaw, conforming to the official hush of secularizing policy, doesn't mention the Sisters' going, as was the case with Fr. Croquette's departure two years before. He mentions an improvement in the teaching in the latter half of 1899-1900, and the following year he names the new teachers as responsible for the improvement.
 The loss of the Sisters brought an immediate drop in enrollment, which continued to dwindle. A 12-day inspection in June 1904, elicited criticisms and the next year, the Indians pressed to have the boarding school made a day school, ostensively to have the benefit of their children's weekend labor. In 1905, Kershaw hoped that recent legislation would boost it the following year. The new team was praised for harmony in its first year, when it was able to throw itself into a few building projects.

Boarding School System Starts Phase Out 1906

 By 1906, there was a national trend away from reservation boarding schools towards day schools or regular public schools or centralized Indian schools, as at Chemawa. A first step at Grand Ronde, in 1907, was to introduce six Indians among the eight employees of the school. The next step, in 1908, was to close the Indian school altogether and to send the children either to the local public school or to Chemawa.

Father Felix Bucher 1898

 The aged missionary, Msgr. Adrian Croquette, had refused to retire from his parish until he was assured that another priest would be sent to take his place. When he was told that a new pastor was to be sent he resigned his position, having administered the sacrament of baptism for the last time at Grand Ronde in October 1898. Shortly thereafter he returned to his old home in Belgium.
 After the departure of Msgr. Croquette, Fr. Felix Bucher continued his custom of riding in from Siletz from time to time in order to administer to the Catholic Indians at Grand Ronde. The parish records of the latter parish show his first baptism there on December 10, 1898, a private ceremony for Clara, daughter of Victoria Sill and Dan Wocchino. Though he may have visited the parish in succeeding months there was no new entry by him until July 16, 1899. However, the pastor of Corvallis, Fr. Severin Jurek, visited the Grand Ronde Mission in March of that year, as well as in May and August.
 The absence of a resident priest at Grand Ronde was a hardship not only for the faithful of the mission but especially for the Benedictine Sisters who were helping conduct the agency school. Consequently, the Sisters' Superior to the Mount Angel mother house petitioned the archbishop for a resident priest so that the members of her community at Grand Ronde might have daily mass and the sacraments, telling him that unless a priest was sent the Sisters would be recalled to Mount Angel.

Father Charles Moser Arrives September 1899

In his pressing need Archbishop Alexander Christie, who was n