[or-roots] Missing Cow Creeks

[CKlooster at aol.com]

Hi Les and Others...
 
My sister and I copied and photographed the Rondeau Cemetery on the old  
Vernie Lerwill place above Tiller last summer and I sent copies to you, I think,  
and to other interested people on this list.  There was a big fire that  
burned down from Bland Mt.  and across the valley below this summer,  but I don't 
know if the Bland Mt. cemetery was disturbed either.  It is a  different 
cemetery than the Milo/Lavadour Cemetery.  I grew up in the  Canyonville-Days Creek 
area and married a guy whose family have been residents  of Drew since the 
early 1900's.  I've been collecting local  history...including family 
histories...of the Tiller, Drew, Days Creek, and  Canyonville areas for years, and spent 
many hours listening to and writing down  the stories of various old-timers of 
the area including my former husband's  father, uncles, and grandfather.  I 
was fortunate in knowing many of the  older people who were also interested in 
the local history and some had  family roots going back to the first white 
settlers of the area.  I would  have to agree with at least some of what Aloaha 
A. wrote...at least it matches  the things I heard from oldtimers.  There was a 
general agreement that  there was not a large number of Indian people in the 
area when the first  settlers came there, but that relations between the first 
settlers and the  Indian people were generally amicable...until the trouble 
down on the Rogue  River between the miners and the Indians.  If you read the 
first-hand  accounts by Riddle, it details the removal of the Cow Creek band of 
Umpqua to  the reservation at Grande Ronde where most of them died from the 
disease  caused by overcrowding and generally horrible conditions.   While it  
may be possible that some of those people did hide away, I don't think they 
are  the same people as those who now call themselves Cow Creek Indians.  The  
current "tribe" was actually named a "historic successor tribe" by the federal  
government when they were seeking recognition from the federal government in 
the  1960's/1970's.  This was in response to the Bureau of Indian Affairs  
assertion that none of the people seeking federal tribal recognition were  
actually descended from the Cow Creek band of the Umpquas.  Politics aside,  history 
needs to be recorded as accurately as possible.  I've found quite a  few of 
the family members in census records, but it is true that some of them do  
disappear from Douglas Co...or else they haven't yet appeared there.  That  is 
kind of the point...they aren't in the census of Douglas Co. because they are  
living elsewhere, such as in K. Falls.  I don't know what the great  attraction 
was in that area, but I do know that some of the guys from  Tiller-Drew went 
to Lakeview during the 1930's to work in the woods and at a  sawmill there and 
my former hustand's uncle talked for working in a mill near  Klamath Falls 
(which would have been in the late 1930's or early 1940's.  
 
Anyway, I'd be interested in a list of who you could not find.  I  started 
looking at these census records years ago when I was putting together  family 
information for my nieces and nephew who are descended from the Rondeau  family. 
 I might have some pieces to your puzzle.
 
I'd be happy to exchange information with anyone interested.
 
 
Carla
 
STEPHENS, HAWLEY, WHEALDON, and SHIELDS in Oregon and  Washington.
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