Oregon Historical Society Research Articles

Betwixt and Between the Official Story: Tracing the History and Memory of a Family of French-Indian Ancestry in the Pacific Northwest

 OHQ vol. 111, no. 2 Melinda marie Jetté Betwixt and Between the Official Story© 2010 Oregon Historical Society Tracing the History and Memory of a Family of French-Indian Ancestry in the Pacific Northwest When she got ill, she went into the hospital and we used to go up to visit her a lot there. Some of the nurses were nuns and they all spoke French. She would rattle off French to them like you wouldn’t believe. Like that’s all she spoke was French.1 In the early spring of 1931, Marguerite Jette (née Liard),an elderly woman of eighty, spent the last weeks of her life at St.Vincent’s Hospital in Portland. St. Vincent’s, founded by the Sisters of Providence, was then still staffed by missionaries sent out from the order’s motherhouse in Montreal. What was unusual about this particular patient was the fact she conversed with the nuns in French. Although Marguerite had been born and raised and had lived all her life in Oregon, French was one her native languages.2 This was the result of her familial links with French Canada. Her father, step-father, grandfather, and husband had all been born in Lower Canada (Quebec). Marguerite’s singularity in 1931 did not end with her French-Canadian heritage.Familyphotographsdepictastern-facedmatriarchwithhighcheekbones and dark, coarse hair that hint at her Indian ancestry. Her Oregon family roots stretched back more than a hundred years to the initial phase of Euro-American colonization in the Pacific Northwest — when Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) fur traders and trappers exploited the region’s natural resources. Marguerite’s mother and grandmother were among several generations of Native and métis women who intermarried with FrenchCanadian men employed by the HBC.Both the men and the women played  Jetté, Betwixt and Between the Official Story Like her mother and her grandmother before her, Marguerite Liard Jette (1851–1931) wed at a young age to a French Canadian, Adolphe Jette. The marriage proved a successful partnership, and Marguerite’s grandchildren remembered her as a canny businesswoman and matriarch of the family. Courtesy of the author  OHQ vol. 111, no. 2 crucial roles as laborers and cultural brokers in the fur-trade enterprise,albeit with second-class status.During the mid 1800s, Marguerite’s parents and grandparents witnessed the United States’annexation of the lower portion of the Oregon Country, Anglo-American settlers’ rise to political supremacy, and the settlers’ institution of a regime of racial exclusion across the region. Raising a large family under the force of these processes in the late 1800s, Marguerite Jette and her husbandAdolphe followed a complex path that led to the relative assimilation of their descendants into dominant Euro-American society by the time of Marguerite’s death in the early 1900s. Although Marguerite Jette’s experience did not make it into the standard history books, the contours of her family’s history are part of a much larger continental story. The centuries-long process of Euro-American colonization necessarily involved ethnic intermixing in all of the contact zones where Natives and colonizers met and interacted. In recent decades, scholars have begun to explore the ways bi-cultural family and community histories complicate and deepen NorthAmerican history — what Gary Nash has called“the hidden history of mestizoAmerica.”3 Historians studying the West have underscored the intermediary position occupied by mixed-bloods in the fur-trade economy from the late 1700s through the early 1800s.By the late 1800s, the decline of the fur trade, the great Anglo-American westward migrations, and regimes of racial exclusion effectively marginalized these bi-cultural communities. The majority of those in the United States were faced with the choice of joining their Native kinfolk on Indian reservations, “passing”into the dominantAnglo-American culture,or perhaps,for a small number, migrating to Canada or more remote areas.4 Recent studies on bi-cultural families and communities from Cherokee Territory to the Great Lakes and from the Missouri country to the Pacific Northwest suggest that those who assimilated into the dominant AngloAmerican society — becoming “white” in the process — tended to downAdolphe Jette (1825–1917) emigrated to the Pacific Northwest via...

Reflections on Writing a Siletz Tribal History

 OHQ vol. 111, no. 4 Charles Wilkinson Reflections on Writing a Siletz Tribal History© 2010 Oregon Historical Society As is the case with American Indian tribes generally, the history of the Siletz people of western Oregon holds a great deal of pain and injustice, tempered by the prosperous societies that pre-dated by millennia the arrival of non-Native people and,as well,by the robust modern revival that followed the dark years lasting from the late 1700s through the 1960s.Recounting this compelling body of human experience,and struggling to get it right,has been one of my life’s most cherished journeys. Part of that satisfaction has been my own learning, not just about the events, personalities, and profundity of Siletz history, but also about scholarship and the writing of history. In January 2005, I began work on what would become The People Are Dancing Again: The History of the Siletz Tribe of Western Oregon, a project that consumed much of my professional time for nearly six years. My hope is that the process of writing this book will be of use to future tribal historians, and I offer this piece in that spirit. The Siletz tribe is a confederation of approximately thirty distinct tribes and bands,representing ten different language groups.In 1856,after the end of the Rogue River War, the government forcibly moved these peoples to the recently established Siletz reservation on the Oregon coast. The largest removals came from southern Oregon, site of the war that gripped the residents, Indian and non-Indian, for five years and took the lives of more than six hundred people. The removals, some by ocean-going steamships and some by land, from the homelands occupied for thousands of years were incomprehensibly confusing and brutal. The reservation, their newly assigned residence encompassing 105 miles of the central Oregon coast, did not last; federal actions in 1865, 1875, and 1894 — the first two probably illegal and the third coerced — took almost all of it. Inthelatenineteenthandtwentiethcenturies,nationalpoliciesattempted to assimilate Indian people by stripping them of their culture, religion, and  Wilkinson, Reflections on Writing a Siletz Tribal History In an earlier book, Charles Wilkinson wrote that Indian tribes have endured “five centuries of survival under the most excruciating pressure of killing diseases, wars, land expropriation, and official government policy — forced assimilation, then outright termination. Yet the tribes are now the strongest they have been in a century and a half. Never has this land seen such staying power.” Ultimately, The People Are Dancing Again, with its textured exploration of Siletz history and all the loss and modern revival, stands as dramatic testament to that staying power. Courtesy of University of Washington Press, designer Tom Eykemans  OHQ vol. 111, no. 4 land.Siletztribalculturenecessarilywent underground.With tribal members supposedly — but not actually — “fully assimilated,” Congress terminated the tribe in 1954. (The termination policy, imposed on several dozen tribes before being repudiated,called for ending the federal relationship,abrogating treaties, and selling off reservation lands.) Then, beginning in the early 1970s,the tribe reorganized and requested restoration.Federal legislation in 1977 and 1980 repealed the termination statute,restored full federal recognition to the Siletz tribe, and established a small reservation. Modern times have also brought economic success (the tribe has a casino in Lincoln City and other business ventures) and an inspiring,far-reaching cultural revival. From the outset, a number of important factors worked in my favor as I researched and wrote The People Are Dancing Again. The tribe had asked me to write its history and provided a generous expense budget that allowed me and my research assistants to travel from Colorado to Oregon for interviews, meetings, and site visits. The tribe’s Cultural Department contributed mightily to the writing of the book, and its extensive collection supplied nearly half the book’s one hundred photographs. Midway through the project, we realized that the tribe’s substantial governmental staff included another significant asset,Brady Smith,a first rate cartographer. Delores Pigsley, the tribal chairman, assigned Brady to the book, and he crafted more than thirty maps that communicated aspects of Siletz history. Also,tribal sponsorship meant that Siletz members would be less suspicious...

Green Beans, Green Cash: Alderman Farms' Post—World War II Teenage Workforce

 OHQ vol. 111, no. 3 When my parents sold their North Dakota dairy in 1947 and moved our family to Oregon, they were awestruck by the abundance of fresh fruits, berries, and vegetables. My father spent his first two days in the state picking cherries, mostly for the sheer joy of fresh fruit off the tree. It seemed to be everywhere, and we were certainly not in North Dakota any longer. A summer later, at the age of twelve, I was introduced to the cornucopia — on the business end of a strawberry carrier and a bean bucket. For a decade, my summer home was the sprawling Alderman Farms near Dayton, one of the nation’s largest row-crop operations — certainly the largest in theWillametteValley — and I grew up amidst beans, berries, and companions of youth.1 Tens of thousands of young Oregonians shared my experience, at large farms such as Alderman’s and small neighborhood berry patches; it was how we spent our summers, long before the advent of summer ballet and soccer camps or trips to Europe or Disneyland. Alderman Farms’ summer workforce was larger than the population of the nearest town, Dayton, drawing workers from as far away asVancouver and Portland, Depoe Bay and Taft.2 The heart of the picking crew and its support workers was Yamhill County and the county seat of McMinnville, where I grew up and graduated from high school and college. For a generation of young people, Alderman’s was an extension of our school year. We started berries when school closed in June and started school when beans ended in September, and our baseball games, evenings “dragging the gut” of Main Street, and trips to the beach all worked around the crop seasons. Alderman’s was virtually selfsufficient , with a freezing plant, equipment-repair sheds, cafeteria, sawmill,helicopter,Texacostation,and 75,000-gallon water tower. The farm Green Beans, Green Cash© 2010 Oregon Historical Society oregon voices Alderman Farms’ Post–World War II Teenage Workforce by Floyd J. McKay  McKay, Alderman Farms’ Post–World War II Teenage Workforce hired upwards of 300 year-around workers, but the big push during the summer—whenlabor-intensiveberry and bean crops came in — attracted pickers by the thousands. The scale of the Alderman operation was unique in the valley, but what went on at the ground level (literally) was typical of the workplace for tens of thousands of young laborers in the 1950s. Teenagers from Portland to Eugene shared the experience, and it remains a bond for thousands of retirees who grew up in that era. Young people had worked on farms for centuries,primarily for their families or, at most, nearby neighbors. But the Second World War forced farmers to hire outside the traditional work force (which had gone off to war),and that search took farmers into cities and towns where there was an untapped source of labor in housewives and teenage children. Wartime officials plunged into the task of recruitment; at the federal level, a U.S. Crop Corps was created, with a Victory Farm Workers organization for young workers and a Women’s Land Army for women. In Oregon, the Extension Service operated by Oregon State College was the major organizer and promoter of hiring women and teens to work on the farms.3 Alderman Farms was a community in itself, employing about 300 year-around workers and up to 3,000 a day during bean season. When Urie Alderman threw his annual barbecue in the 1940s, thousands of regular employees, neighbors, local merchants, and politicians were on hand. According to the newspaper caption, this 1945 gathering devoured four fatted steers, 4,500 buns, five barrels of corn on the cob, and 800 pounds of snap peas. The picnic followed the end of the bean harvest, closing the intensive summer harvest season for area teenagers.© 1945 the Oregonian. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. OHS neg. no. bb009908  OHQ vol. 111, no. 3 At the time Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Urie Alderman was forty-three years old and only two years into full-time ownership and management of the farm that his father, Ennis, started on Wallace...

Moralistic Direct Democracy: Political Insurgents, Religion, and the State in Twentieth-Century Oregon

^3 H LAWRENCE M. LIPIN 1 AND WILLIAM LUNCH ES H Moralistic Direct I Democracy H Political Insurgents, Religion,and theState H inTwentieth-Century Oregon ^^^ OREGON'S REPUTATION FOR political innovation dates back to I^^Hi theimplementation of thesystem of "direct democracy"embodiedby the %2|gfx initiative and referendum systems thatwere established early in the twentieth I century, transforming a constitution that in its original writing reflected less originality than commitment to older, eighteenth-century ideals.1 No state has utilized these tools more than Oregon, and no other state was earlier in itsusage.2 Among the states that have had the initiative available, more have appeared on theOregon ballot, 349, than in any other since the system began in the early twentieth century; only California is close with 331.3 Yet, the patterns have not been consistent, as usage of the tools of direct democracy have waxed and waned over the century since their adoption. More precisely, there have been two significant waves of heavy usage, at the beginning and end of the twentieth century. Political scientist Richard Ellis points out thatmore measures appeared on theOregon ballot between 1906 and 1914 than for the entire period between 1920 and 1969 and thatduring the 1980s and 1990s,more measures passed than in the previous six decades.4 If Oregon has been shaped by the use of direct democracy, that formation has been within specific historical contexts. This article examines themoments of frequent recourse to direct democracy, drawing conclusions about the particular influence ofmoral beliefs on the process. Both of thesemoments have been characterized by the deployment of a populist moralism thatblended policies regarding the role of the statewith a 514 OHQ vol. 110, no. 4 ? 2o?9 Oregon Historical Society From Joseph Gaston, Portland,Oregon: Its History and Builders (Chicago, 1911); OHS digitalno. baoi9279 Critics of the initiativeand referendumargued that the public would be inundated with overlycomplicatedproposals. This 1911cartoon compares theGlasgow, Scotland, voteron the left, who votes simply for his citycouncilfrom hisward, and the Des Moines, Iowa, voter in thecenter, who votesmerelyforfive city commissioners, with the overwhelmed Portland, Oregon, voter, who contemplates a three-foot-long ballotwith a heading, uForExpertsOnly." rhetorical style that argued "natural" and "traditional" values and economic opportunities had been perverted by elites. The fight fordirect democracy at the turn of the twentieth century began in earnest when a group ofworker and farmer organizations joined together under the leadership of William S. U'Ren to form the JointCommittee on Direct Legislation. These insurgents perceived the legislature as an obstacle to reforms supported by populist voting blocs, and theybelieved the tools of direct democracy would permit "the people" to circumvent the corrupt "interests" that seemed to control the votes of legislators. These earliest proponents of the tools of direct democracy decried the growing economic power of corporations and sought to revive a form of Jeffersonian democracy they believed had once characterized Lipin and Lunch,Moralistic Direct Democracy 515 American politics by first establishing the system itself and then proposing new laws that promised a radical transformation of the structures of power and wealth in the state. Some seventy years later, use of the initiative again intensified as con servative reformers qualified for the ballot initiatives to reduce taxes and limit state spending; they calculated such measures to undo the process of state building that occurred between these two periods of extensive direct democracy. Political scientists have utilized the term "conservative popu lists" to describe some of the activists who have made frequent use of the initiative process in this latter period. Richard Clucas and Mark Henkels, for example, argue that "conservative populists believe the core problem ofmodern politics is how government agencies, politicians, and an elitist media interferewith the popular will. They fear that these groups hinder private economic choice, the effectiveness of themarket, and the public's ability to promote broadly shared conservative social values."5 Conservative populists have also favored government intervention to enforce what they perceive as traditional social relations. The advocates of suchmeasures have had strong ties to the evangelical churches, and themainstream press has often portrayed them as the shock troops forwhat Patrick Buchanan at the 1992Republican National Convention called a "religious war...

"Wheedling, Wangling, and Walloping" for Progress: The Public Service Career of Cornelia Marvin Pierce, 1905-1943

_CHERYL GUNSELMAN "Wheedling, Wangling, and Walloping" for Progress The Public ServiceCareer ofCornelia Marvin Piercey 1905-1943 CORNELIA MARVIN PIERCE (1873-1957) isa formidable figurein Oregon history, an important Progressive Era public servant and reformer whose impact on the state is still evident more than fiftyyears after her death. Beginning in 1905, she directed statewide efforts to develop free public library services as head of the Oregon Library Commission and, later, as Oregon State Librarian. Citizens and civic leaders throughout the state knew "Miss Marvin" forher highly visible and effective efforts to introduce library services, particularly in remote rural areas, and she isbest remembered for this phase of her public service career. In addition to serving as the state's leading librarian, Marvin also helped reform and develop public higher education as a Regent of theOregon State Normal School and as amember of theOregon State Board of Higher Education. She left the State Library in 1928 to begin the second phase of her public service career, this time as a political spouse, marrying former governor Walter M. Pierce. With her support and assistance, Pierce moved to the national political arena as a member of theU.S. Congress during theNew Deal era. In all of these capacities, Marvin operated as a progressive reformer and highly skilled manager, well known for her strong opinions and forceful style.Her tool of choice for sharing these opinions was her pen; she was an extraordinarily prolific correspondent, with a vast national network OHQ vol. no, no. 3 ? 2009 Oregon Historical Society I a Cornelia Marvin isshown here at theage of thirty-onein 1905, theyear she became Secretaryof the Oregon LibraryCommission. Gunselman, The Public Service Career ofCornelia Marvin Pierce of contacts in librarianship, education, social reform organizations, and government. Cornelia Marvin Pierce's career and liberal-reform work ? especially her pioneering work in the development of free public libraries ? influenced and directly affected political, educational, and social condi tions inOregon. Typical of pioneers in many areas of endeavor, Cornelia Marvin benefited from a fortuitous combination of circumstances: the national public library movement was just gaining momentum in thePacific Northwest; the tools of direct democracy ? initiative, referendum, and the direct primary ? were just being implemented in Oregon, requiring a well-informed citizenry; professional training for librarians had just been introduced inAmerican colleges and technical institutes in the 1890s, and Marvin was a graduate of one of these early library schools; and shewas recruited toOregon from the State of Wisconsin, the "laboratory of democracy," where many progressive politicalreforms had already been tested.1 Shebelievedthefree public library was an institution with tremendous potential for advancing progressive reform, especially with Oregon's new possibilities for direct democracy: "The new form of government being tried inOregon has sent the people of Oregon to school," Marvin wrote, "and that school is the only one open to adults, and to those who wish to carry on any sort of practical research outside of the public schools and universities ? the free public library, state, county and municipal."2 She used all of her considerable energy and expertise to extend public library services throughout the state. Marvin was a challenging, demanding, effective leader who was easier to admire and respect than to like. In her correspondence, even with her closest colleagues, family, and personal friends, her tone was often imperi ous, unapologetically reflecting her confidence in her own judgment and opinions. Itwas not unusual for her to issue bold, frank, and sometimes public challenges to government officials, colleagues inAmerican library leadership, prominent Oregon citizens, and others when she objected to their actions or wished to offer advice. She was a relentlessly insistent cor respondent, and thousands of her letters have been preserved, along with many responses. They illuminate her strong sense of purpose, her resistance to compromise, and the impact she had on local, state, and national affairs. Her lifeand career exemplify tensions and conflicts between social expecta tions of a woman from a middle-class background and the opportunities and demands of a high-profile professional position. Historian Dorothy Johansen (1904-1999) described her friend Cornelia Marvin Pierce's leadership style in a 1959 speech: "she wheedled, wangled, and walloped her way toward her goals...

Exhibit Essay: Life Stories for New Generations: The Living Art of Oregon Tribal Regalia

EXHIBIT ESSAY Life Stories for New Generations The LivingArt of Oregon TribalRegalia byRebecca J. Dobkins INDIGENOUS PEOPLESfrom oppo site sides of thePacific Rim gathered at the Willamette University campus on September 23, 2005, to celebrate the opening at theHallie Ford Museum of Art of Toi Maori: The Eternal Thread, an exhibition of contempo rary and traditional Maori weaving that included ceremonial cloaks and other prized garments. A Procession ofNations welcomed the Maori people of Aotearoa (New Zealand, the 'land of the longwhite cloud' in theMaori language) to the ancestral homeland of theWillamette Valley tribes. The Maori delegation ritually requested permission to enter the territory of their indigenous hosts, and repre sentatives of Oregon's Native nations granted that permission with songs and prayers of respect and welcome. ForWillamette Valley tribes, thisocca sionmarked the first time inmodern history that a "foreign" nation had asked permission to enter their terri tory. The ceremony contrasted sharply with the actions of the Methodist mis sionaries who had entered these very homelands amere hundred and sev entyyears before and had founded the IndianManual Labor Training School, which eventuallymetamorphosed into Willamette University. The Maori and their taonga, or cultural treasures,were not arriving at theHallie Ford Museum by accident. The visitwas set intomotion decades earlier in the 1980s, through the friend ship of Warm Springs artistLillian Pitt andMaori artistDarcy Nicholas. The two had met inNew Mexico, when Nicholas was in theUnited States as a Fulbright scholar, studying Native American art. Out of thatmeeting grew a deep and enduring friendship thathas rippled out to include literally hundreds of indigenous artists and non-indigenous supporters (such as myself) in a series of exchanges and gatherings in both New Zealand and 420 OHQ vol. 110, no. 3 ? 2009 Oregon Historical Society 9 Io "!? TI 1 P R B n ? 8 9 I Alfred "Bud" Lane III (right) of theSiletz tribe performsa smudging orpurification riteas part of theopening ceremony welcoming the Maori delegation to the Willamette Valley on September 23,2005.Maori artists Darcy Nicholas andMark Kopua lookon. North America. The Eternal Thread was the latest,and perhaps most ambi tious,manifestation of this fellowship of theRim. In late 2003, Pitt called me, urging theHallie Ford Museum to consider hosting The Eternal Thread in 2005. She had been in touchwith Nicholas, who as the director of the Pataka Museum ofArts and Culture inNew Zealand, was the exhibition organizer along with theweavers of Toi Maori, the national Maori arts organization. Nicholas was seekingNorth American venues for The Eternal Thread and specifically wished to identifyPacific Northwest museums in order to build upon the pre-existing relation ships theMaori had with the region's indigenous artists, such as Pitt, Rick Bartow, and Joe Feddersen, and with institutions such as the Longhouse at The Evergreen State College inOlym pia,Washington. The Burke Museum at theUniversity ofWashington and The Museum atWarm Springs had already been secured as venues, but theMaori sought one more location. In 2003, Pitt had worked with me and other museum staffformonths, preparing her one-person show Lil lian Pitt: Spirits Keep Whistling Me Home for exhibition at the Hallie Ford in early 2004, and she trusted us Dobkins, The LivingArt ofOregon Tribal Regalia 421 ^^ - ^jfiiiiini?Mfa?fitfiP^fiM^^^^^nM^^^^^B Waana Davis (left),Chair ofToiMaori, New Zealand's nationalMaori arts organization, exchanges a traditional Maori greetingwith Siletz elderAgnes Pilgrim at theopening ceremonyon September 23,2005. The greeting,called a hongi, representsthe passing of thebreathfrom oneperson toanother and isexchanged between hostsand guests at theclose of formalMaori welcoming rituals. in the handling and interpretation of Native American art. She thoughtwe were exactly the kind of venue that Nicholas was seeking, one that could warmly facilitate visits between the Maori, local tribal communities, and the public. So, Pitt started simultane ously working on us at theHallie Ford and on convincing Nicholas thatwe were worthy of thishonor. By December 2003, Pitt's interces sions had cemented the partnership. By February 2004, Iwas off toNew Zealand to spend twoweeks as a guest of theMaori people for the premiere of The Eternal Thread at the Pataka Museum in Porirua City. Staying at a seaside marae, a traditional com munal house similar to a Northwest Coast longhouse, I...

"For Working Women in Oregon": Caroline Gleason/Sister Miriam Theresa and Oregon's Minimum Wage Law

JANICE DILG "For Working Women in Oregon" Caroline Gleason/Sister Miriam Theresa and OregonsMinimum Wage Law INTHE FALLOF 1912, CarolineGleason reportedtohernew job at the StettlerBox Factory on Portland's Glisan and Tenth streets.Gleason's job, and that of her female coworkers, involved gluing labels onto shoeboxes, using glue dipped from a huge, heated pot in the center of a largework table. The odors wafting up from the hot glue were "something less than pleasant."1 After affixing two or three labels, theworkers' hands became so stickywith glue they needed towash them in order to continue their task. Washing off the glue required hot water, which could only be obtained by hauling five gallon pails through the plant to an open steam pipe. The women held their pails under the steam until thewater was heated, then hefted them back to theirworkstations. Gluing labelswas piecework, so the time they spent haul ing pails and washing their hands meant fewer labels pasted on boxes, and thatmeant lesswages earned. After working three ten-hour days, Gleason quit her job having earned the total sum of $1.52. Her experience mirrored that of tens of thousands ofwomen laboring in manufacturing plants, steam laundries, and canneries in the early twentieth century,with one important exception ? Caroline Gleason was working undercover.2 Gleason was directing an organized investigation for the Consumer's League ofOregon (CLO) into thewages and working conditions forwomen wage workers throughout the state, and working at the box factory was one aspect of her job. The CLO was part of the fervent social reformmovement sweeping through theUnited States and all industrialized countries during the Progressive Era, generally defined as theyears from 1890 to 1920.Reform ers had grown increasingly alarmed by the essential ways industrialization OHQ vol. no, no. 1 ? 2009 Oregon Historical Society This portrait ofCaroline JohannaGleason (1886-1962) was createdaround 1910, just twoyears beforeshedirecteda surveyofwomen swork and wages that led to Oregon sfirstminimum wage law. was endangering the social order of the nation and by itseffectson working class men and women. The activists understood that all workers needed protective labor legislation but, forphilosophical and political reasons, soon narrowed their focus towomen workers. Shaped by amaternalist ideology that claimed a woman's main purpose in lifewas to be a mother, social reformers soon deemed protective legislation themost expedient way to Dilg, Caroline Gleason/SisterMiriam Theresa and Oregons Minimum Wage Law 97 OHS photo file1131-B, Org. Lot 256, OrHi 72538 Workers pose inside thePalace Laundry workroom locatedat East Tenth and Everett inPortland, Oregon, inabout 1915. Power laundries requiredwomen workers to stand atmachines and wrestle hot,wet clothesand linens for an average ofnine and a half hoursper day. "protect" women's futurematernal responsibilities. Without responding to the real issues confronting working women in the early twentieth century ? poverty-level wages, gender-segregated occupations, and unsafe working conditions ? protective labor legislation mitigated those conditions, at best, and inhibited genuine protection of women workers, atworst. All protec tive legislation, furthermore, was crafted and enforced within the context of rigid racial and ethnic classifications and divisions, which mainly limited protection towhite women born in theUnited States. Oregon played an important role in the development of protective legislation when its state legislature passed the first compulsory minimum wage law forwomen workers in the nation in 1913.Caroline Gleason, later known as SisterMiriam Theresa, was an integralmember ofOregon's social reform community and played a crucial role in passing the groundbreak ingminimum wage law. By legislating the nation's firstminimum wage forwomen workers, Oregon helped frame Progressive Era debates about 98 OHQ vol. no, no. 1 the changing status ofwomen, their relation towage work, and the role of the state in regulating workers in theworkplace. Exploring Gleason's life and work in the social reformmovement brings the dynamic political and cultural changes of the Progressive Era into sharp human relief.Gleason's complicated, and sometimes contradictory, endeavors on behalf ofworking women exemplify the broader struggle between conservative and radical approaches on how best tomaintain democratic principles and social order in the face of the fundamental changes that industrial capitalism wrought on the social fabric of Oregon and the nation.3 Caroline Johanna Gleason was born to John and...

Stories Worth Recording: Martha McKeown and the Documentation of Pacific Northwest Life

KATRINE BARBER Stories Worth Recording Martha McKeown and the Documentation ofPacific NorthwestLife "THE TRAIL LED NORTH and toLiterary Fame,"declaredaNovember 1948 Oregonian headline, announcing a book publication by a new Oregon author. Martha Ferguson McKeown's The Trail Led North recounts the trials and triumphs of her uncle Mont (Montillious) Hawthorne as he joined the historic scramble of the Klondike gold rush. Journalist Ellen Mills Ewing promised thatwith the book's publication, "three Oregonians will be rock eted to national literary fame ? author Martha McKeown, her 82-year-old neighbor, uncle, and hero Mont Hawthorne, and Mont's 'sonofagun' dog," Pedro. The newspaper's impressive Sunday magazine spread included well illustrated descriptions ofMcKeown, Hawthorne, and thebook's production. "It's a cinch that thisbook will find a niche on thebookshelves ofOregonians along with the tomes of Oregon's ever-growing army of national-caliber authors," Ewing proclaimed. She was right, at least initially.1 Martha McKeown eventually produced three books based on her uncle's life:The Trail LedNorth (1948), Them Was the Days: AnotherMont Hawthorne Story (1950), and Alaska Silver (1951).The books recount the overland journey of theHawthorne family,Mont Hawthorne's search forwealth and adven ture during theKlondike gold rush, and his efforts in the salmon canning industry inOregon, Washington, and Alaska. Macmillian published all three, withThem Was the Days distributed toBritishaudiencesasTheLongSearch forHome: A True Account of a Pioneer Family inAmerica.2 The University of Nebraska Press reprinted the book several times with an introduction that indicated itwas meant for classroom adoption. The last edition was released in 1974, nearly twenty-five years after its initial publication. While it isunclear how many copies were sold byMacmillian, Them Was theDays sold a respectable 16,000 copies as a university press title.3 Martha McKeown OHQ vol. 110, no. 4 ? 2009 Oregon Historical Society Martha McKeown ispictured inherprofessional capacity.She developed a long careeras an English teacher,spendinga brief period as an administrator at Multnomah College inPortland. Barber, Stories Worth Recording 547 $1 ''~ TWAP?B a : ..'*.' '''IB ^^^^^. m Mont Hawthorne was photographed as a young man in about 1889. He spentseveralyears inan informal apprenticeship inAstoria, Oregon, beforehe hired out tositeand design salmon canneries in Washington and Alaska for various companies.His first tripto Alaska was as a prospector in the Klondike gold rush. would go on towrite an Oregon Trail novel, Mountains Ahead (1961), as well as Linda's Indian Home (1956) and Come to My Salmon Feast (1959), two nonfiction children's books about Indian families at Celilo Village near The Dalles, Oregon. Newspapers and magazines widely and positively reviewed McKeown's books, all of which addressed Ore gon s history, and they sold well. Yet, few Oregonians would recognize the author's name today. Published without footnotes or much explana tion of her research process (which contemporary newspaper articles and her notes suggest was extensive), itcan be difficult to assess the docu mentary value of her nonfiction. It is not unreasonable to ask whether Hawthorne's recollections about Astoria's waterfront, the characters he describes on hisway to theKlond ike gold fields, or his assessment of Alaska's canning industry are reli able. Not quite histories, McKeown's books did not endure as regional literature either. She is not listed among theOregon Cultural Heritage Commission's top one hundred books about Oregon, and none of her writing is included in theOregon State University Press's Oregon Literature Series. I am an oral historian who lives in, studies, and teaches about the Pacific Northwest, and over thepast fewyears,McKeown has wheedled herway onto my bookshelves, and intomy courses and research. Her work sparks fascinat ing,contemporary questions about the intersections ofmemory and history thatmatch her storytelling acumen and her apparent fearlessness about dig ging intoher community's problems. When asked who Iwould nominate fora shortbiography, I jumped at thenotion of bringingMartha McKeown toa new setof readers and regional historians. Oregon's 150thanniversary provides an excuse for the luxuries of reviewing old texts with new eyes and asking about their current relevance. Ihope to return readers to Martha McKeown's books with this essay,which pieces together her professional writing and private OHQ vol. no, no. 4 papers with...

Democracy and Its Discontents in Oregon Political History

ROBERT D. JOHNSTON Democracy and Its Discontents in Oregon Political History We are the political and social descendants and heirs of pioneers who had a passionate belief in the common man and inhis ability to organize a society inwhich he could livea lifefreefromrestraintand intolerance,and enrichedby all thathis predecessors had found good. ?Cornelia Marvin Pierce, 1927 ONE OF THE MOST distinctive ? and tomy mind, attractive ? quali ties of Oregon politics historically has been the robust belief in the virtues of the common citizenry. Alas, the history of Oregon's unique strain of hyper-democracy inmany ways remains to be written. Fortunately, the contributors to the sesquicentennial series in this Fall issue of theQuarterly present a vivid and complex set of explorations of the fate of democracy (roughly defined as rule of the government by thewhole people) in twentieth-century Oregon. Cheryl Gunselman takes on the life and politics of Cornelia Marvin Pierce, helping to show how the author of the forceful quotation above often, but by no means always, lived up to the best tendencies in her democratic ideology. The not-uncritical story that Gunselman tells is of a remarkable woman who, despite her frequently imperious character, played a significant role in defining and extending Oregon's democratic culture. Yet, ifGunselman's articles makes us feel at all self-congratulatory about such democratic vistas, Kimberly Jensen, in the first general scholarly exploration ofwomen and citizenship inOregon history, asks us to think about themany limits to democratic participation the state'swomen have experienced, and the halting nature of democratic advance along the gender line. In turn,Robert R.McCoy comes down in the OHQ vol. no, no. 3 ? 2009 Oregon Historical Society middle. In his analysis of the politics ofWalter Pierce ? one of the state's most important political figures ? McCoy argues that individuals who are impressively democratic at one moment can, without real contradiction in their own philosophies, be exclusionary and anti-democratic the next. All three authors demonstrate that the democratic impulse, and pro gressive democratic rhetoric, can sometimes serve as a false ? and even dangerous ? mask behind which lies the face of racism, xenophobia, and even tyranny.Arguably, this continuous tension between democracy and equality, between inclusion and exclusion, while hardly unique to the state, is the special Burden of Oregon History.1 SERENDIPITY PLACES CORNELIA Marvin Pierce'sbirthplace in Monti cello, Iowa. She was, in tellingways, quite like the famous eighteenth-century Virginian Thomas Jefferson, who named his home Monticello. Both were very sure of themselves and of thewisdom of the people. Both believed pas sionately in expanding public education for the common people in order to produce amore enlightened citizenry; Jeffersonfounded theUniversity ofVirginia, and Marvin Pierce was the architect ofOregon's public library system and aswell as an important crusader forhigher education. They both considered themselves modern, scientific, and enlightened ? and believed that enlightened, scientific,modern life could best be served by democracy. At the same time, both had fundamental flaws in their democratic visions ? Jefferson's,of course, was slavery, and Marvin Pierce's the eugenic idea of better breeding of humans in order to eliminate weak creatures from the populace. There was also at least one major difference between Jeffersonand Pierce: gender. The egalitarian political culture that Jeffersonplayed such a crucial role inunleashing during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries offered almost no formal political roles forwomen. Yet, throughout thenineteenth century, various radical women seized on the rhetoric in theDeclaration of Independence to expand political oppor tunities for them and their sisters.Despite Marvin Pierce's own difficult-to explain ambivalence about woman suffrage, shewas asmuch a beneficiary of this other revolutionary tradition as shewas of the Jeffersonian legacy.A proud Midwesterner who forged her professional and political philosophies in the crucible of progressive Wisconsin's "laboratory of democracy," Corne liaMarvin came toOregon as a self-conscious pioneer and missionary. She signed on to build Oregon's public library system and then spent the next two decades literally creating the state'smodern constellation of libraries. Following custom ? and constraint ? she resigned her high-profile posi tion on hermarriage to Walter Pierce. She then accepted an appointment to Johnston, Democracy and ItsDiscontents inOregon Political...

Revolutions in the Machinery: Oregon Women and Citizenship in Sesquicentennial Perspective

KIMBERLY JENSEN Revolutions in the Machinery OregonWomen and Citizenship inSesquicentennial Perspective HISTORIANS ENGAGE in a dynamic process of research, writing, and analysis that often leads us from one subject of study to new questions and freshfields of inquiry.As we commemorate the sesquicentennial ofOregon statehood in 2009,1 find myself in just such a transition as a historian of women. My previous research concerned U.S. women and the FirstWorld War, inparticular how groups ofwomen ? physicians, nurses, and women at-arms ? claimed a more complete female citizenship at a time when the final years of the national woman suffragemovement intersected with questions of service to the state during wartime and broader civic roles for women beyond voting.1 In the course ofmy research, I encountered Oregon physician and activist Esther Pohl Lovejoy. Her medical work in France in 1917and 1918and thehistories shewrote ofwomen physicians in the conflict became a vital part ofmy larger analysis. As I learned more about Lovejoy's rich history as an early Oregon medical school graduate and physician, a public health activist, a suffragist,a congressional candidate, and a key figure in international medical relief, I decided towrite her biography as the next step on my historian s journey. As part of this process, ithas been crucial forme to study Oregon women shistory as a context for Lovejoy's life and activism. Because Lovejoy was involved in claiming amore complete citi zenship in her work forwoman suffrage, through her service in appointed office as Portland City Health Officer from 1907 to 1909, and in her quest for elected office in 1920, questions ofwomen's citizenship are also central tomy current project. While seeking to understand Esther Lovejoy as an OHQ vol. no, no. 3 ? 2009 Oregon Historical Society Before theachievement ofwoman suffrageinOregon in 1912,a fewwomen held appointed office,includingEstherPohl, Portland CityHealth Officer (at right),and Sara A. Evans, PortlandMarket Inspector, pictured hereat CityHall in 1907 (detail of larger photograph). Oregon woman and activist, Ihave tried to uncover and analyze thebroader history ofOregon women as citizens. Citizenship maybe defined as the set of rights and obligations thatmem bers of a community or state possess by law.The rules about citizenship are setby federal, state, and for some, tribal authorities. In theUnited States, as in other nations, citizenship has been gendered in theory and practice. As his torian Linda Kerber demonstrates, "from thebeginning American women's relationship to the state has been different in substantial and important respects from that ofmen." Citizenship has been embodied as male, from voting, office holding, and jury service to bearing arms to defend home and nation. In the early American Republic, white married women's legal Jensen, Revolutions in the Machinery 337 loyaltywas to their husbands, not to the state.As Kerber notes, the idea that women are connected to the state and to citizenship indirectly through their husbands and male relatives and not directly as individuals was a powerful one that continued aswomen began to claim and win individual citizenship rights in thenineteenth century and beyond, and it"lurks behind what many people take tobe the common sense of thematter inour own time."2Not all men were accorded the rights of citizenship. Early property qualifications forvoting meant economic statusmattered. Whiteness and manhood were also necessary for citizenship and naturalization into the twentieth century. Because citizenship may also be defined as "the broader political, legal, and social meanings that attach to one's place within the polity," gender, race, ethnicity, and gender identity all have been categories that actively privi lege some and deny others civic power and authority.3 Alice Kessler-Harris emphasizes another gendered aspect of civic identitywith what she terms "economic citizenship." In the United States, the "public commitment to themale-breadwinner family" produced a different set of rights and obli gations forwomen as economic citizens in theworkplace and civic realm.4 Women have been at the nexus of struggles to secure full citizenship. Many have fought to end what Gretchen Ritter termswomen's "border status" of civic identity, to claim complete civic rights and full adult membership and human rights in their communities, the state, and the nation.5 What follows are some reflections about Oregon women...

The Paradox of Oregon's Progressive Politics: The Political Career of Walter Marcus Pierce

ROBERT R. MCCOY The Paradox of Oregons Progressive Politics The PoliticalCareer of Walter Marcus Pierce IF ASKED TO NAME INFLUENTIAL state politicians, Oregoniansmight mention the names of Harry Lane, Charles McNary, William U'Ren, or Tom McCall. Walter M. Pierce, however, would likely not be on the list.As an undergraduate, I spent many hours at the card catalog and in the book stacks of Eastern Oregon State College's Pierce Library, named afterCorne liaMarvin Pierce and her husband Walter Marcus Pierce. Despite being a history major, I knew little about either Pierce ? only that Walter was the one-time governor of Oregon and, rumor had it,an active Ku Klux Klan member during his lifetime. Later, I learned about Pierce's complex political life and themany legacies leftby this consummate Oregon politician. Walter M. Pierce's political career spanned fifty-six years, from 1886 to 1942.Over those decades, he held numerous elected offices inOregon: county recorder, state legislator, governor, and U.S. congressman. In addition tohis wide-ranging experience as a politician, Pierce participated in some of the most influential political and social movements of his time, ranging from Populism and Progressivism to eugenics and prohibition. Much debate has surrounded Pierce's political career, especially concerning his connections to theKu Klux Klan, because his life and political activities illuminate the contradictions that existed within the liberal-progressive political tradition in theUnited States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.1 These contradictions aremainly products of late twentieth and twenty-first century interpretive stances, created as we try to understand how people could have supported efforts to democratize the political process and limit the excesses of themarketplace while at the same timeworking to curb the OHQ vol. no, no. 3 ? 2009 Oregon Historical Society This portrait of WalterMarcus Pierce was taken inAugust 1926,during his lastyear as Governor ofOregon. At age sixty-five, Pierce was campaigningfor reelection. During his tenureas governor,Pierce had survived recallefforts, unsuccessfully pushed for tax reform, and sufferedthe lossofhiswife tocancer in 1925. McCoy, The Political Career of Walter Marcus Pierce 391 political and economic rights ofAfrican Americans and Japanese and Chi nese immigrants, exerting a paternalistic moral vision of reform through the implementation of prohibition, and seeking to create a racially pure society through eugenics. Governor of Oregon, New Deal Democrat, populist and progressive, advocate of eugenics and birth control, prohibitionist, and ardent racist, Pierce exemplifies a period of political and social movements that sought to reshape theAmerican Republic. Perhaps the best way to understand these contradictions is through the category of populist politics as defined by historians Robert Johnston and Nancy MacLean. Johnston describes one side of the coin, asserting that the middle class during the Progressive Era created a "radical democratic popu lism" that propelled much progressive political change inOregon and the United States.2 Describing the other side of the coin,MacLean uses the term "reactionary populism" tounderstand the enormous middle class attraction to the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s.3 Individuals like Pierce, who was of themiddle class, existed inboth categories, often simultaneously supporting democratization and economic equality alongside limitations on certain groups' access to such enfranchisement. My understanding of Pierce's middle-class radical-democratic popu lism and reactionary populism isbased on Johnston's interpretation of the middle class in early twentieth century Portland. He contends thathistorical scholarship has consistently constructed themiddle class "as a unitary and ahistorical category or entity instead of a product of constant political and cultural struggle." For Johnston, there is "no such entity as theAmerican middle class." Instead, contrary to the portrayal of "middling folks" as con servative and monolithic, Johnston asserts that "people in themiddle have created one of America's most democratic political traditions, a populism that has often represented a radical challenge to the authority of economic, political, and cultural elites and that has called into question many of the fundamental assumptions of a capitalist society."According to Johnston, the middle class (ormiddling classes) is a flexible category,worked out through politics, because "politics alwaysmakes class concepts meaningful in society."4 Johnston'smiddling classes comprised members of thepetit bourgeoisie, the working class, and farmers in varying and shifting coalitions. For...

Oregon Voices: "Doing Nothing with a Vengeance": The Diary of David Hobart Taylor, First Oregon Cavalry, January 1 through May 31, 1862

OREGON VOICES "doing nothing with a vengeance" TheDiary of David Hobart Taylor, First Oregon Cavalry,Januaryi through May 31, 1862 byJames Robbins Jewell THE CIVIL WAR came to the people of Oregon in a rather circuitous way. Following the April 12 and 13, 1861, attack on Fort Sumter in theCharles ton, South Carolina, harbor, President Lincoln called on every state, includ ingOregon, to provide troops for the national emergency. Given the state's small population and distance from the seat ofwar, Oregon's effortto raise a regiment did not get under way for severalmonths. By the late fallof 1861, with most of theRegular Army forces called out of the Pacific Northwest and sent east, the need to provide troops to protect the region against emboldened southern sympathizers and increasingly aggressive Native American tribes (particularly the Bannocks, referred to as Snakes by the Euro-American settlers) had become obvious.1 California volunteers were dispatched to replace the departing Regulars ? who leftplaces like Fort Walla Walla to fight in theEast? but theCalifornians, who would be needed elsewhere, were only a temporary solu tion until a sufficientvolunteer force could be raised inOregon. Usually, governors assumed respon sibility for selecting the men who would raise volunteer regiments in their states, but thiswas not the case inOregon.2 Instead of entrustingGov. JohnWhiteaker with the task, the War Department ignored him and took the unusual step of asking three private citizens, none then a part of Oregon's governing body, to take up the responsibility.3 The reason for this step was simple: in themonths following the presidential election, Whiteaker had made a number of public comments tinged with south 598 OHQ vol. 110, no. 4 ? 2009 Oregon Historical Society ." /* :U^ 7 /~C?.- ^-^?9-2 ' /^V '| /% ;.? ypr This image is taken from theJanuary to May 1862diary keptbyDavid H. Taylor,a member of theFirstOregon Cavalry Regiment during theCivilWar. ern sympathy.4 The culmination of those controversial statements came in May 1861, when he published a lengthy commentary on the justness of the southern cause thatwas carried in all theOregon newspapers. While claim ing loyalty to theUnion, the governor stated theConfederacy had a right "if need be, touse every justmeans within theirpower todefend themselves, their property and institutions, against the unjust encroachments of theNorth." The governor, furthermore, attacked theUnion government, stating: "It is difficult tofind an apology fordecep tion in any case, but duplicity isheld to be a crime in those in authority, when practiced toward the [south ern] people."5 In the fall, Whiteaker further fueled suspicions about his loyaltieswhen he failed to respond to a request by the District of Oregon commander, Col. George Wright, and raise even a single company of cavalry to protect immigrants from raids by Bannock Indians.6 Given increasing suspicions aboutWhiteaker's loyalties, the War Department decided to take the extraordinary step of skirting the governor when ordering the creation of a regiment ofOregon cavalrymen. Thus, prominent civilians Thomas Jewell,1862Diary ofDavid Hobart Taylor 599

Research Files: Oregon's Historic Sites Database: A Tool for Tapping the Research Potential of the Built Environment

RESEARCH FILES Oregon sHistoric Sites Database A ToolforTapping the ResearchPotential ofthe BuiltEnvironment byRogerRoper HISTORICAL RESEARCHERS are adept at gleaning facts from obscure places. They know the nuances and secretofferingsof thevarious archives, libraries, and repositories of public and private records. Yet they often overlook a key primary source: his toric structures themselves. What was built and how it was built often helps answer some of history's "whys."And sometimes there is physical evidence of how a structure has been used and adapted thatofferscompelling insight into the people and practices of the past. The following examples illustrate the point: VictorPoint School, Marion County: This 1889 one-room schoolhouse originally had fourwindows along each side of the building, but those on the south sidewere laterremoved. This actionwas in response to an educational expert's recommendation that cross-lighting was damaging to students' eyes. To compensate forthe loss of natural light, three more windows were thenadded to thenorth side.The building stillreflects thatpolicy change. Marshfield Sun Building, Coos Bay: The deeply worn floorboards where pub lisherand printer JesseLuse planted his foot to run the hand-operated press is testament to his commitment to pro ducing a newspaper for the community from 1891 to 1944. Roba Ranch House, near Paulina: Deco rative stone carvings on the exterior of this 1900house suggestold-world tradi tions brought to theAmerican West by theCzech immigrant family who estab lished the ranch and built thehouse. Crook County Courthouse, Prineville: This dignified courthouse, set back from the street in a park-like setting, commands our attention and respect ? both for the edifice itself and, not coincidently, for the county govern ment and its workings. Architects of the 462 OHQ vol. 110, no. 3 ? 2009 Oregon Historical Society Vi?c?or Powf School,pictured here in 1919,northofSublimity,was typicalofmany one-room schoolhouses of theperiod with a gable-end door and evenlyspaced windows along both sides. Windows on thesouth (right) elevationwere later removed,as seen in the inset photograph, toprotect students'eyesfrom the perceived harmful effects ofucross-lighting.y) period understood the importance of establishing, through settingand archi tecture, the proper tone forhow both occupants and visitors should conduct themselves on the premises. These buildings and stories may not be headliners in the same sense as more recognizable landmarks, such as the State Capitol, Vista House, or Union Station in Portland, but both landmarks and lesser-known struc tures provide important insights into Oregon's diverse history. Learning to read and interpretthem takes timeand training. Ithelps tremendously ifthere is a comprehensive and reliable set of records about all those structures. It helps even more if those records are computerized and can be queried in a variety ofways to respond to awide range of research questions. Oregon has such a record set in the State Historic Preservation Office's Historic Sites Database ? a one-stop source for answering a wide variety of research questions. Have you ever wondered, for example, which build ing inyour community is the oldest? How about the oldest in the state? Or maybe you have a more complex research question about historic struc tures inOregon, such as: How many grange halls are there, and which of them are listed in theNational Reg Roper,Oregon's Historic SitesDatabase 463 Courtesy ofOregon SHPO TheMarshfield Sun Building inCoos Bay isnow a museum featuring original printing equipment and relatedartifacts.Itsmost compellingfeature, however, may be the worn floor boardsfrom theoperator's shoesas he leveragedhisweight to engage the press ?for somefifty years. isterof Historie Places; are there any nineteenth-century library buildings still standing; which counties still have their historic courthouses; and what are thedates of construction and locations ofBeaux Arts stylebuildings, Queen Anne houses, Octagonal struc tures, buildings designed by Pietro Belluschi, and CCC-era fire lookout towers? The database has been created by theOregon State Historic Preserva tionOffice (SHPO) in recent years to better organize, track,and research the tens of thousands of historic building records in itsfiles.The federal govern ment and the state established SHPO in 1967, and ithas been coordinating the collection of information about the state's historic buildings and sites ever since. This information iscritical tohistoric preservationists and histo rians statewide. Maintaining amaster record set of all...

Parties and Politics in Oregon History

^3 H ROBERT D. JOHNSTON H Parties and Politics H in Oregon History H ONE OF THE DISTINGUISHING themesin Oregon shistoryiscitizens' KB relative lack of partisan attachments. To be sure, there have been plenty 3 of demonstrably Democratic or rambunctiously Republican citizens. Hi Compared toNew York, or Illinois, orMississippi, however, the history of ^9 Oregon's politics speaks most powerfully of disaffection with political par ^| ties, crusades forvirtuous anti-partisanship, and mobilization of themasses xallglk in independent social movements. Moreover, Oregonians self-consciously cl^^?ii forgedthe most distinctiveinstitutions of statepolitics ? the initiative ^^^^?y and referendum ? to help them escape fromwhat the system's architects I perceived as the tyrannical yoke of corrupt party machines. That said, plenty ofmomentous Oregon history has happened because of, and bymeans of, political parties. The two articles in this second install ment of theOregon Historical Quarterly s statehood sesquicentennial series are fine reflections on this countertradition in the state's past. Barbara Mahoney reveals the vigorous partisan landscape inpre-Civil War Oregon, where parties served as the primary vehicle for the state's ideological and economic conflicts. Jeff LaLande narrates aweaker, but stillquite important, partisan landscape a century later,when Oregon's Republican Party was at the beginning of arguably themost significant transition in itshistory. What was at stake in the fights between Whigs and Democrats, and later between Republicans and Democrats, Mahoney and LaLande show, was not just the occupancy of this or that political office. Rather, some of the most important issues in the state's history were decided in the course of these struggles. In the nineteenth century, party activists played amajor role in deciding what kind of political structures and civic lifeOregon would have ? and how inclusive theywould be, particularly inmatters relating to race. During the twentieth century, proud partisans decisively shaped the state's economy, particularly in relation to theway the federal govern HI 194 OHQ vol. 110, no. 2 ? 2009 Oregon Historical Society ment protected, or did not protect, public lands and natural resources. In both cases, matters of civil rights and civil liberties were central to political discussions, and in both cases, the fate of all these issues inOregon would reverberate well beyond the state's borders. Far toomuch of the history ofAmerican political parties is, to be frank, rather boring. Much of it iswritten by political scientists, who generally concentrate more on pulling meaning from crunched numbers than creating compelling narratives of human interest. Even when historians tackle this subject, they get bogged down in matters relating to conflict between ethnic groups, the distribution of patronage, and themobilization of voters that ? while crucially important ? rarely appeal to a broad public audience.1 Fortunately, both Mahoney and LaLande center their lively stories on, well, lives. Both historians narrate the political careers of individuals who were not only significant in their times but who also left an intriguing paper trail. Asahel Bush, the Democratic leader who is the protagonist of Mahoney's article, is better-known, at least in scholarly circles, than LaLande's subject. Definitely one of Oregon's Founding Fathers, Bush in many ways created party politics in the Beaver State. His vociferous advo cacy for the Democratic Party forged a bold method of political rhetoric (the so-called "Oregon Style") and a bold brand of racial discrimination. In contrast, part of the premise of LaLande's article is the need tobring toGuy Cordon, an almost complete unknown, into the annals of the state's history. LaLande definitively shows that Cordon's obscurity is not deserved, since "the state's last conservative U.S. senator" played a noteworthy role in many important national decisions during the 1940s and 1950s.And his defeat was even more momentous: during the supposedly complacent and conserva tive 1950s ? The Age of Ike ? Oregonians sent Cordon packing from his post in Washington, D.C., helping to lay the foundation for the brand of modern liberal Republicanism that still remains amajor component of the reputation of Oregon politics (although, in 2009, that reputation isnot as accurate as itused to be). BARBARAMAHONEY DEPICTS a nineteenth-century politicalculture thatmakes our current civic life, with its frequently uncivil battles between Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann, look...

Oregon Voices: Oregon Democracy: Asahel Bush, Slavery, and the Statehood Debate

3 OREGON VOICES Oregon Democracy Asahel Bush, Slavery, and the Statehood Debate by Barbara Mahoney AS EDITOR OF the Oregon States man, Asahel Bush guided Oregon's political leaders through the greatest challenge of the times ? successfully negotiating statehood within the tense national debates on slavery that led up to theCivil War. Bush's use of his newspaper as an overt political tool was not so uncommon for the times. The Dean of theGraduate School of Journalism at Columbia University recently wrote of the nineteenth century as a time when journalism was a "branch of politics."1 Another journalism scholar states the case evenmore strongly: "The newspaper press was thepolitical system's central institution, not simply a forum or atmosphere inwhich politics took place. Instead, newspapers and their editors were purposeful actors in the political process linking parties, voters, and the government together, and pursuing specific political goals."2 Through the territorial period and into statehood, Oregon demonstrated precisely that reality.Editors identified the issues, set thepolitical agenda, and dominated the players. Because of its distance from the power center of theUnited States, one might assume that the controversy over slaverywas irrelevant toOregon. It was, however, inextricably bound to Oregon's move toward statehood dur ing the 1850s.The question ofwhether Oregon would be a slave or free state was widely argued and divided the political leadership of the territory. After settlers in theOregon Territory had voted to seek statehood, admis sion to theUnion was delayed because thepro-slavery faction at thenational level feared thatOregon's entering the Union as a free statewould affect the balance of power in Congress. The newspapers and private correspon dence of the era paint a vivid picture of the dispute and its consequences and demonstrate Bush's central role in itsoutcome. The institution of slavery was well established by the timeAmerica achieved independence fromEngland. 202 OHQ vol. 110, no. 2 ? 2009 Oregon Historical Society Asahel Bush (picturedhereas an olderman) came to Oregon in 1850,at age twenty-six, to found the Oregon Statesman. As itseditor,he became a powerful voice in thepolitical lifeof theterritory and thestate. He sold the Oregon Statesman in 1863and went on tobecome a prominent bankerand businessman.He died in 1913. As the country grew, the question of slavery's expansion shaped thedebate over the admission of new states and spurred a series of congressional mandates. The Ordinance of 1787 banned slavery in the newly acquired Northwest Territory,which included the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part ofMinnesota, effectively setting the Ohio River as the northern bound ary for slavery. In 1820, theMissouri Compromise set a boundary between slave and free stateswithin the lands Mahoney, Asahel Bush, Slavery,and the Statehood Debate 203 of the Louisiana Purchase. Similarly, Congress applied the painstakingly constructed Compromise of 1850 to the landswon by theUnited States in theMexican War. Finally, theKansas Nebraska Act of 1854, fashioned by Illinois Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas, abolished theMissouri Compromise and established "squatter sovereignty,"whereby the inhabitants of a territory or state could decide whether or not to allow slavery. When American settlerscreated a provisional government in theOregon Territory through theOrganic Act of 1843, they approved an anti-slavery law on the basis of theOrdinance of 1787 and its prohibition of slavery in thenorthern territories.3 Meanwhile, the allure of the north Pacific coast attractedmore and more immigrants. As the population grew, theBritish andAmerican governments reached an agreement, in 1846, ending their joint occupation of the area. In 1848,theCongress established Oregon as a territoryof theUnited States. By 1850, approximately twelve thousand people had immigrated to Oregon from the East, mostly from theOhio and Mississippi valleys.4 They shared common life experiences and aspira tions and differedmarkedly from the California pioneers in that they sought promising farmland rather than gold. Their ambitions were addressed in a provision of the Organic Act, giving anyman in the territory the right to 640 acres without having to pay for them.While successful in attracting new settlers, the provision created numerous uncertainties until itwas confirmed by the Oregon Donation Land Law, passed by Congress in 1850. The key figure in the passage of the 1850 legislation was Samuel R...

The Politics of Oregon History: An Introduction to OHQ's Statehood Sesquicentennial Series

ROBERT D. JOHNSTON The Politics of Oregon History An Introductionto OHQ's Statehood Sesquicentennial Series IN 1959, THE Oregon Historical Quarterly remained, as ithad been for decades, an active celebrant of the state's pioneer past. Surprisingly, though, the journal did not takemuch formal notice of the centennial of Oregon statehood. When itcame time tomeditate on the big anniversary, powerful editor Thomas Vaughn turned not to a historian, but rather to a poet, to do the honors. From far-offHarvard, David McCord waxed lyrical about the wonders of theOregon Country. In three short paragraphs of a kind of prose poem, McCord invoked all kinds ofmythical wonders. From "the world's most famous trail" to "two decisive mountain ranges," from "rhapsodic Crater Lake" to "the majestic sweep of the Columbia River ... at Crown Point," Oregon was glorious. Naturally. While there were "desolate" areas that had produced "despair" for the squatter, such rain rarely intruded on the state's sunny historical parade. Even human relations were simple, and happy, for "the people everywhere are neighbors and friendly."McCord could conclude in only one majestic, rhapsodic, way: "How tremendous ? 'Where rolls theOregon!'"1 In 2009, there remains much for us to celebrate inOregon's heritage. Over the past fiftyyears, however, the state's historical institutions and scholars of the state's history have become considerably more reflective and self-conscious about themeaning of their responsibility forOregon's past. In good part, that isbecause the story of the state's history ? the big storyline that provides the foundational bass line for each new article and book ? has become much more complex, interesting, and critical. OHQ vol. no, no. 1 ? 2009 Oregon Historical Society Cities do not intrudeon theseal of thestateofOregon. (Nor,for thatmatter, does rain.) The sun sets gorgeously behind the mountains, as well as over the state's major extractive industries(timber,agriculture,andfisheries). Yet,while economics and livelihood seem to trumpall, thereis room in thesealforpolitics. The only words within thecentral shield,The Union, may seem innocuous todaybut in the nineteenthcentury pointed toward thedistinctlyanti-slavery ideologyof'free soil, free labor,and freemen? The addition ofOregon in 1859as the thirty-third state (note thenumber ofstars)was a significant moment in therun-up to theCivilWar. The state seal replaced twoprevious versions,onefor theprovisional government (1843-1849) and onefor the territorial government (1849-1857).The members of the state constitutional conventionappointed a committee todesign theseal,which was adopted twoyears beforestatehood.Tellingly, thenew state seal erased the Native American who had servedas theonly human presence in the territorialseal. Johnston, The Politics ofOregon History 39 Historians, more than any other scholars, should know how dangerous it is to congratulate ourselves on our current enlightenment. We understand thatwe, too,will be judged, and perhaps even condemned, for our weak nesses, failures, and blindnesses. That said,we should be proud of our recent ability to discover anew the richness, complexity, and pleasures of the past in the Beaver State. Above all,we no longer need to look at history solely as the study of surface fireworks: the deadly wars, the dramatic elections, the lives of great individuals. Instead, we have begun to look in compelling and even captivating ways at some of the deep structures of our past.We can try tofigure out how, for instance, a changing relationship between countryside and cityhas produced modern-day Oregonians, as have the continuities and dramatic transformations of thehistory of the environment. We can explore how family and gender relations, in ever-continuing transition, have influ enced landscapes of personal identity as well as the possibilities of citizen ship inmodern Oregon. And we can examine the lives of relatively ordinary individuals along with the high and mighty, sowe can seemore vividly how Oregon has always been a land of varied people and experiences.2 TO CONTINUE THIS revitalized exploration of thestudy of the Oregon past iswhat we hope to accomplish in this special OHQ series dedicated to the 150th anniversary ofOregon statehood, what we are calling the "Statehood Sesquicentennial Series." In the four issues of volume no of the Quarterly (throughout 2009), series articles will range throughout the state's past, illuminating some dark corners of Oregon history as well as shining new...

Queer Collections Appear: Oregon's Wedding Album

Changes in archival collecting strategies by historical museums and libraries began in the 1970s, with emphasis on the shift from "old families" and "great white men" to broader documentation of communities and issues. The Oregon Historical Society began collecting personal records of same-sex marriages after Multnomah County, Oregon began granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004. The "Wedding Album Project" consists of letters, photos, news articles, and other documents related to these couples' experiences. Same-sex marriage has become one of the central controversies of our era. The fact that the marriages were later nullified further enhances the collection as an important document.

Research Files: Master of the Columbia: Photography by Carleton E. Watkins at the Oregon Historical Society

RESEARCH FILES Master of the Columbia PhotographybyCarletonE.Watkins at the OregonHistorical Society by Megan K. Friedel ON JUNE23, 1916, CARLETON E.Watkins, the great landscape pho tographer of theAmerican West, died blind and penniless in theNapa State Hospital for the Insane in northern California. Aside from a few small, mostly unfinished projects during the early 1890s, Watkins took few photographs in the lastdecades of his life ? and nothing on the scale of his earlier masterpieces of Yosemite and theColumbia River Gorge. The pho tographer's health had declined so pre cipitously by 1903 that he was almost completely blind and unable towork. Similarly, Watkins's finances, never his strong suit,were in disarray. He sold few photographs at all after 1890, and though a selection of his prints was exhibited at theLewis & Clark Centen nial Exposition inPortland during the summer of 1905,he was never paid for thework. Friends tried tohelpWatkins negotiate a sale of his negative and print collection to StanfordUniversity, but on April 18,1906, furtherdisaster struck: a devastating earthquake and firedestroyed the cityof San Francisco andWatkins's entire studio, including his life's work, along with it.1 Itwas an ignominious end for a man who had produced some of the grandest and most celebrated land scape views of theWest during the nineteenth century and who revo lutionized the practice of landscape photography with his large-format mammoth-plate prints. Shortly after Watkins's death, his close friend, the San Francisco photographer Charles Beebe Turrill, attempted to resurrect public interest inhis colleague's work. Turrill's essay, "An Early California Photographer: CE. Watkins," was the firstpublished biography of the pho tographer, appearing in the January 1918 issue ofNews Notes ofCalifornia Libraries, an imprint of theCalifornia State Library. The articlewas a reprint of textTurrill had written to accom 434 OHQ vol. 109, no. 3 ? 20?8 OreS0n Historical Society All imagesfromOregon Historical SocietyResearch Library Org. Lot 93 li O X ?> Carleton E.Watkins, Clearing the channel,Cascades, Columbia River,Oregon (BoudoirD161), 1883 Friedel,Master of theColumbia 435 pany a catalog ofWatkins's "New Series" stereoscopic photographs for the library, and his intention was to bring notice to the scope of the photographer's life work aswell as to itsplace in historical scholarship. As the editor's introductory note states, "it is believed that the work ofMr Watkins was a valuable one forCali fornia, and also that it iswell to draw the attention of California libraries to the worth of these stereoscopic views, some of which every library might have."2 Turrill's article isnotable not only forbeing the firstsubstantive account of Watkins's accomplishments but also because of the audience forwhom it was intended. Turrill turned first to libraries, as opposed to private art collectors, as themost fittingplaces to preserveWatkins's work. In doing so, he brought to light the historical, rather than the artistic, significance of the California State Library's collec tion ofWatkins's stereoviews. Turrill donated many of his own stereoviews to the Society of California Pioneers, including seventy-five glass-plate negatives that had been stored at his home instead of atWatkins's studio during the 1906 earthquake and thus were saved from destruction.3 Many other institutions apparently followed Turrill's lead; the Bancroft Library at theUniversity ofCalifornia, Hunting ton Library, the Library of Congress, and Stanford University today hold some of themost substantial collec tions ofWatkins material. Despite so many libraries takingnote of Watkins's influence and importance, little seri ous scholarship was published about Watkins until themid 1970s.4 The Oregon Historical Society began actively collecting the pho tographs of Carleton Watkins well before he was rediscovered by schol ars. Today, itholds one of themost significant collections ofWatkins material in the nation. Housed at the Oregon Historical Society Research Library, the collection includes 268 stereoscopic photographs (commonly known as "stereoviews"); 43 other card-type photographs, including cartes de visite, cabinet cards, and boudoir cards; 100mammoth-plate photographs; 2 photograph albums; and several loose-plate prints.5Many of theWatkins photographs at the society,especially the mammoth prints and early stereoviews, are signed by the photographer himself, and all of the titles and numbers of themammoth plate photographs arewritten inpencil inhis own hand. What...

This Bountiful Place: Art about Agriculture, the Permanent Collection by Shelley Curtis

referenced,they invariablycome frompopular writings and are eitherpresented as straw men ? tobe easily refuted ? or out of context in order to bolster a particular point. The effect is a disappointing echo chamber where like minded people with bad ideas tell each other how smart they are. Mark David Spence Albany, Oregon that each artwork was produced and acces sioned into the collection since 1980, aesthet ics from both Modernist and Postmodernist art periods intertwine throughout" (p. vii). But there is littlethatqualifies as postmodern here? perhaps Yolanda Vald?s-Rementeria's 1994Familias Campesinas, which has thevir tue of introducing political dimension to the collection, or Charles True's Filbert Orchard at Sunrise, a digitally-manipulated panoramic photograph. Lois Allan, who has been writ ingabout art in thePacificNorthwest for two decades, gets closer to the truth inher catalog essay: "Art About Agriculture does not intend to challenge itsviewers, as somuch avant-garde work does, but rather,itspurpose istocelebrate the earth's bounty and the energy, commit ment, and persistence of themany workers who bring from itour life-givingsustenance" (p. 17). Perhaps inorder toup theante,Allan begins her essay by placing theArtAbout Agriculture paintings in a broader historical perspective by drawing analogies among the celebration of food and wine inprehistoric art ? such as the cave paintings at Lascaux, France, which "depict animals that were the source ofhuman sustenance"? Greek art and itsDionysian worship of the grape, a still lifedrawing of peaches discovered in the ruins of Hercula neum below Mt. Vesuvius, seventeenth-century Dutch stilllifepainting,Van Gogh's Potato Eat ersand Sunflowers,andMillet's The Sower. But because thiswork is sowell known to arthis tory,itsappeal isalmost universal. To compare itto the art inThis Bountiful Place? so local in itsappeal ? seems something of a stretch. That said, there is, as art critic Lucy Lippard once put it,a certain lure to the local. The local is more personal, more intimate. It seems to speak directly tous,without com plication. In the fabric of contradictory and pluralmeaning thatdefines our contemporary world, the local offersus something of a safe haven. It is,afterall,what we know? with a measure of certainty. This BountifulPlace offers THIS BOUNTIFULPLACE: ARTABOUT AGRICULTURE, THE PERMANENT COLLECTION editedbyShelley Curtis Oregon State University and Oregon Historical Society, Corvallis and Portland, 2006. Illustrations, photographs, bibliography, index. 241 pages. $26.00 paper. This BountifulPlace isa catalog containing full color, full-page reproductions of the almost two hundred works of art that comprise the permanent collection of the Oregon State University College of Agricultural Sciences. Beginning in 1983, the college began hosting an annual juried exhibition,ArtAbout Agricul ture, and the collection represents jurors' pur chase awards made over the years up to 2006. The idea,asGwil Evans, one of the exhibition's founders, recalls, was to "encourage Pacific Northwest artists to seek creative stimulation fromwhatever the artist perceived as related to agriculture, food, or natural resources" (p. 2). The result is a body ofwork that focuses primarilyon nature's bounty (stilllifesof fruits and vegetables), landscape (dry and freshly tilled or green and lushlyverdant? more or lessdepending onwhich side of the mountains is represented), livestock (a lot of sheep and cattle), and homesteads (farmhouses, barns, and attendant outbuildings). In her foreword, the catalog's editor and directing curator of theArtAbout Agriculture collection, Shelley Curtis, claims that "given Reviews 639 up these local comforts and pleasures. Add to this theextraordinarily richproduction values that thepublishers have lavished on thisbook ? itswonderful and true color is testimony, once again, thatLynxGroup printing of Salem is a truly remarkable, if largelyunsung, asset toOregon culture ? and you have, all inall, a beautiful book, a joy to leaf through,page by page, something akin to a visual harvest. Henry Sayre Oregon State University - Cascades Campus critical transformative period in Utah's, and the inter-mountain West's, early twentieth-century agriculturalhistory. Agriculture acrossAmerica was becoming big business by the early twen tieth century and this is a case study,of sorts, of how a single industry ? asmuch as copper mining inMontana or timber-cutting in the Pacific Northwest ? came to dominate the economy, thepolitics, and the culture of a vast region of the country. Throughout this period, the Church of Jesus Christ ofLatterDay...

Picturing Progress: Carleton Watkins's 1867 Stereoviews of the Columbia River Gorge

MEGAN K. FRIEDELAND TERRY TOEDTEMEIER Picturing Progress Carleton Watkins's 1867 Stereoviews ofthe Columbia RiverGorge DURING THE SUMMER AND EARLYfallof 1867, San Francisco-based photographer Carleton E.Watkins traveled toOregon to photograph settle ments along theupper Willamette River and,more significantly, theColum bia River Gorge. Itwas amomentous trip.Never before had a photographer attempted to so comprehensively navigate and document theGorge's steep shores and treacherous rapids. Between Julyand November, Watkins made forty-twomammoth-plate photographs of theColumbia River at locations between Portland and Celilo. Today, those prints are renowned asmaster pieces of early landscape photography. The mammoth prints would not have been possible, however, without the photographer's lesser known but equally noteworthy body of work ? 139 three-dimensional stereoscopic photographs, or stereoviews, that Watkins also made along the river.1The smaller, facile stereo format allowed Watkins to experiment inways that the heavy and cumbersome mammoth-plate format could not. Using a stereo scopic camera, he systematically mapped the river's landscape, searching for the perfect viewpoint, where he then assembled hismammoth-plate camera for the quintessential shot. Thus, for everyWatkins mammoth print, there aremultiple stereoview images that consider optional angles and alternate subjects. These stereoviews, furthermore, literallyunderwrote Watkins's pen chant for grand photographs at a grand scale.Whereas hismammoth prints were sold and exhibited to a select few, the photographer's stereoviews were easily mass-produced and became popular in parlors all across a country obsessed with the camera's ability to create "true" pictorial representations of theAmerican West. OHQ vol. 109, no. 3 ? 2008 Oregon Historical Society All imagesfromOregon Historical SocietyResearch Library Org. Lot 93 Carleton E.Watkins, Residence of Jo. Bailey, Esq., O.R.R. Cascades (Stereoview no. 1295), 1867 For all that,Carleton Watkins's stereoscopic photographs are not simply theworkhorses of his collection. In their very studiousness and efficiency, theColumbia River Gorge stereoviews necessarily tell a richer story than the mammoth prints. At a timewhen theColumbia was used almost exclusively for commercial travel, rather than forpleasure cruises, the stereoviews pro vide an exceptional chart of one man's sensory journey along the river and offer the possibility that a landscape itself could be the reward of rigorous travel.They also offer the first visual chronicle of the rapidly changing history of Euro-American settlement in that formidable landscape, capturing the river as it lay in the balance between the pioneer era and more modern ways of life.Lastly, these photographs form a unique historical record of theways the human relationships that Watkins formed during his travels inOregon facilitated and informed his vision of theColumbia River Gorge. The path that led Watkins to theColumbia River Gorge was one paved by equal doses of happenstance and hard work. Born in 1829, Watkins was raised inOneonta, New York.2 In 1851,he lefthis pastoral birthplace to join the fast-growing tide of immigrants heading west to seek their fortune in California's post-Gold Rush economy. Watkins headed west in the footsteps of his childhood friendCollis Huntington (1821-1900), who had established a hardware business in Sacramento, and took a job inHuntington s shop, delivering mining supplies. Late the following year, a fire destroyed the hardware store,which was only a temporary setback forHuntington but putWatkins out of work. He moved to San Francisco and took a job as a Friedetand Toedtemeier, Carleton Watkins's 1867Stereoviews 389 clerkwith another Oneonta friend, George Murray, who had established a book and stationary store in the fast-growing city. By chance, Murray's storewas adjacent to the studio of premier pioneer daguerreotypist Robert H. Vance (1825-1876). When Murray's bookstore went out of business, Watkins went towork forVance. He proved to be a good study of the process of making daguerreotype photographs, and Vance soon hired him tomanage one of his two studios. Vance was one of the few California daguerreotypists who, in addition to the portrait trade, consistently took photographs outdoors; he made and exhibited hundreds of daguerreotypes of California scenery, forwhich therewas considerable interest in theEast.3 This relatively specialized field also appealed to Watkins, and he decided tomake it themainstay of his own photography business, which he opened in San Francisco in 1858. Watkins soon...