| Case: | The Oregon Donation Act, Indian Removal & Early Settlement |
| Theme: | American Dreams; Growth of Democracy & Cultural Contact & |
| Conflict | |
| Time Period: | 1815-1859 (Antebellum Expansion, 1840s-1860) |
On 27 September 1850 Congress passed the Oregon Donation Act, marking a watershed moment in the history of the Oregon Territory, the United States, and western civilization. For the first time in American history, citizen-settlers could acquire federal public domain for free. Unlike their predecessors who had to pay a fixed per-acre price or competitively bid at public auctions for land, Donation Act claimants earned their land through their residency and labor. Donation Land Claims (DLCs) granted 320 acres to bona fide settlers (minimum age of 18) who resided in Oregon Territory on or before 1 December 1850. A married settler could claim an additional 320 in his wife’s name, allowing a married couple to become the fee-simple owners of 640 acres (one square mile) for free. A second provision granted 160 acres to claimants who arrived in Oregon Territory between 1 December 1850 and 1 December 1853–this date was later extended to 1 December 1855. To receive this gift, the act required settlers to establish occupancy and cultivate part of their claim for four consecutive years. The act authorized settlers to locate on any vacant, unreserved, non-mineral public domain in the Oregon Territory.
Officials of the Oregon Provisional Government (1843-1848) had passed the Law of Land Claims in 1843, which also granted 640 acres to permanent settlers. Although the federal government did not recognize the authority of the Provisional Government, and had not extinguished aboriginal land title or completed the rectangular survey in Oregon, pioneer-settlers nonetheless staked their land claims and began building homes, clearing land, diverting water, and growing crops. When Oregon attained territorial status on 14 August 1848 the federal Organic Act voided the laws of the Provisional Government and threatened land claimants with eviction from their homes and farms as “squatters.” To defend land claims established under the Provisional Government, Oregon’s non-voting territorial delegate to Congress, Samuel Thurston, petitioned for the passage of a federal law that would retroactively validate this settlement.
By 1850 over 9,000 overland pioneers had crossed the Oregon Trail and settled along the Willamette and Umpqua River Valleys and their tributaries. Stricken with “Oregon Fever” and inspired by the mood of “Manifest Destiny,” these settlers had sprinted ahead of General Land Office surveyors and Interior Department treaty negotiators, and claimed land that was not officially “open” to entry. Moreover, many of these settlers arrived before the 1846 Oregon Boundary Treaty with Great Britain ended joint occupancy and established the international border at the 49th Parallel, and before Territoryhood in 1848. Consequently, Oregon settlement presented the federal government with the relatively unique dilemma of “delayed extinguishment”–consummating treaties of land cession with tribes after Anglo-American settlement had occurred.
White settlers asserted that their more productive and civilized use of land and natural resources entitled them to superior property rights, however, Native Americans enjoyed the legal standing of “prior occupancy” under constitutional law. Although the federal government had no intention of expelling these “nation-building” yeoman farmers, the white emigrants were technically trespassers on Indian lands who had violated the law. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, drafted under the Articles of Confederation, regulated territorial law and explicitly sanctioned aboriginal land title. The 1846 Oregon Boundary Treaty and the 1848 Oregon Territory Organic Act extended this provision to Oregon, the former stating: “settlers are not to settle or occupy land in use by the different Indians until such land is ceded to the U.S. by treaty” and the latter prohibiting land claims “so long as such rights shall remain unextinguished by treaty between the U.S. and such Indians.”
Congress provided a process for expediting the extinguishment of Indian title prior to Oregon statehood, federal survey, and formal patents with the passage of the Indian Treaty Act of 1850. This legislation extended the Indian Trade and Intercourse Act of 1834 to Oregon, and authorized commissioners to negotiate treaties with the Oregon tribes “for the extinguishment of their claims to lands lying west of the of the Cascade Mountains . . . [and] to remove all these small tribes . . . and leave the whole of the most desirable portion . . . open to white settlers.” In 1851, Anson Dart, the first formal superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Oregon territory arrived from Wisconsin and launched a campaign to negotiate treaties with all of the tribes living west of the Cascades. Dart’s superiors in the fledgling Bureau of Indian Affairs instructed him to focus on extinguishing title to the DLCs in the fertile bottom lands of the Willamette and Umpqua Valleys and the lucrative timber stands of the Coast Range and Pacific Slope of the Cascades. Dart also received orders to relocate these tribes on remote, semi-arid reservations east of the Cascades.
Dart organized the Willamette Valley Treaty Commission in 1851 and ultimately oversaw the negotiation and signing of 18 treaties throughout western Oregon–none of which were ratified. A second series of treaties negotiated by Indian Superintendent Joel Palmer between 1852 and 1856 secured ratification, and ceded roughly 60 percent of Indian lands to the U.S. including that containing DLCs. Despite the will of many BIA officials and most Oregon residents, Palmer sought a western Oregon home for the tribes and ultimately supported the creation of the Grande and Siletz Reservations. By statehood in 1859 nearly all the western Oregon tribes had been removed to these coastal reservations.
John P. Preston, the surveyor-general for Oregon, and his crews also struggled to accelerate the rectangular survey of Oregon, and reconcile this geometric grid of townships, sections, and quarter-sections with the irregular boundaries of DLCs, which often adhered to natural features and topography rather than a standardized cartography. The Oregon Donation Act allowed settlers to “locate” their land claims prior to the completion of the rectangular survey, and only compelled pre-survey claims to be “compact.” Consequently, nearly all DLCs were “nonconforming” with the rectangular survey, which was not completed until 1874 in the areas containing DLCs By 1851, Preston charted the Willamette Meridian running north and south between Canada and California and began surveying the east-to-west Baseline. (The coordinates meet at the Willamette Stone State Park in the west hills above Portland.) The system left an indelible imprint on Oregon’s landscape and development. It gave every parcel of land a unique address based on its distance form the primary coordinates, and subsequent settlement under the Homestead Act of 1862, the Timber & Stone Act of 1878, and other forms of entry adhered strictly to this legal land description. Although DLCs were permitted to retain their irregular shapes, the completion of the survey was critical because DLC claimants had to submit “proof of settlement and cultivation” to the General Land Office within twelve months after settlement in a surveyed township, or within twelve months of the completion of the rectangular survey if settlement antedated the survey. However, the confusion over claim boundaries delayed the issuance of the final DLC patent until 1903!
This case study holds particular significance or local, state, and national history. First, the Oregon Donation Act was foundational in shaping the early political, legal, economic, environmental, and social development of the Territory and State of Oregon. It also exacerbated “Oregon Fever” and precipitated a second era of overland pioneer migration across the Oregon Trail. The depletion of prime land to settle on the western slope pushed settlement to Central and Eastern Oregon by the 1860s and 1870s. Second, the dilemma of “delayed extinguishment” forced the federal government to establish a process of Indian removal, treaty negotiation, and reservation construction that influenced federal Indian policy nationally, through the allotment era. The treaty negotiations of Anson Dart and Joel Palmer and the formation of the Siletz and Grande Ronde Reservations necessitated by the Oregon Donation Act and implemented by the Indian Treaty Act set important precedents for other territories and states. Third, the perceived success of the Oregon Donation Act in expanding the republic and underpinning local communities and citizen-settlers finally empowered Free Soilers in Congress to pass the seminal Homestead Act of 1862. This law democratized the disposal of the federal estate and applied the egalitarian logic and philosophy behind the Oregon Donation Act to all remaining public domain in the United States. Contemporary advocates contended that the Homestead Act promised to realize Jefferson’s vision of the Yeoman Republic and Fee-Simple Empire of small land-holding citizen-farmers preserving democracy and republic values of rugged individualism, local autonomy, and social independence. The Oregon Donation Act initiated the era of homesteading that defined public land law in the United States until the passage of Taylor Grazing Act in 1934 reversed the federal policy of disposal and permanently reserved the remaining public domain.
The history of the Oregon Donation Act embodies the themes of American Dreams, the Growth of Democracy, and Cultural Contact and Conflict. Many overland pioneers perceived the Oregon Country as a paradise where they could realize a social mobility, political equality, and material prosperity unattainable in their respective places or origin. The passage of the Oregon Donation Act in 1850 represented a democratic revolution in the social order and appeared to fulfill the Edenic visions of Oregon. No modern western civilization had recognized the birthright of every adult male citizen (and their wives) to be granted and own private property in freehold, regardless of one’s social status or family heritage. Although the Oregon Donation Act restricted eligibility to white and “half-breed” citizens (and those having declared the intent to naturalize), the succeeding national Homestead Act of 1862 contained no racial or gender limitations. Combined, many Americans believed the two land laws fulfilled Jefferson’s Yeoman Republic. Other boosters of western expansion and settlement lauded the acts for embodying the “labor theory of property,” or the belief that one’s labor expended in cultivating a claim created a valid and unconditional legal title to the land and not one’s wealth, status, or power. Jeffersonian republicanism also contended that freehold ownership instilled the yeoman (small, citizen-farmer) with independence, self-reliance, individualism, virtue, and civic-mindedness. In turn, this independence empowered the yeoman to protect American democracy and the republican virtues of the nation. Finally, the translation of these lofty ideas into federal statutes caused profound intercultural contact and conflict between the indigenous cultures of the Oregon Country and Euroamerican emigrants. Settlers ultimately patented 7,437 Donation Land Claims covering roughly 2.5 million acres of prime land. The accompanying Indian Treaty Act culminated in the removal of the western Oregon tribes from their traditional homelands and their concentration on the Siletz and Grand Ronde Reservations.
Why did Oregon become the first territory to receive the privilege of free land for its residents? How did the Donation Act affect local politics in Oregon? Did this law create a more
egalitarian society or did it lead to the consolidation of land and power? What was the profile of emigrants that the Donation Act attracted? How did the Donation Act shape the environmental history of Oregon? How did the Donation Act affect the indigenous cultures of western Oregon? What evidence of Donation Act remains today?
IV. Resources:
Berquist, James M. “The Oregon Donation Act and the National Land Policy.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 58:1 (1957): 17-35.
Bowen, William A. The Willamette Valley: Migration and Settlement on the Oregon Frontier. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978.
Chused, Richard H. “The Oregon Donation Act of 1850 and Nineteenth Century Federal Married Women’s Property Law.” Law and History Review 2:1 (1984): 44-78.
Clark, Malcolm. Eden Seekers: The Settlement of Oregon, 1818-1862. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.
Douthit, Nathan. Uncertain Encounters: Indians and Whites at Peace and War in Southern Oregon, 1820s-1860s. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2002.
Gates, Paul Wallace. History of Public Land Law Development. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1968.
Grout, Elwin Edward. “The Impact of the Donation Land law Upon the Development of Oregon.” M.A. thesis, Portland State University, 1994.
Head, Harlow Zinser. “The Oregon Donation Acts: Background, Development and Application.” M.A. thesis, University of Oregon, 1969.
_____. “The Oregon Donation Claims and Their Patterns.” PhD diss., University of Oregon, 1972.
Loy, William G., Stuart Allan, Aileen R. Buckley, James E. Meacham. Atlas of Oregon. Eugene: University of Oregon Press, 2001. [See maps titled “Donation Land Claims; Public Land Survey” and “The Progress of the Public Land Survey”]
_____. Atlas of Oregon CD-ROM. Eugene: University of Oregon Press, 2001. [See interactive maps titled ““Donation Land Claims; Public Land Survey” and “The Progress of the Public Land Survey”]
O’Callaghan, Jerry A. The Disposition of the Public Domain in Oregon. New York: Arno Press, 1979.
O’Donnell, Terence. An Arrow in the Earth: General Joel Palmer and the Indians of Oregon. Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press, 1991.
Peterson, del Mar. Oregon’s Promise: An Interpretive History. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2003.
Robbins, William. “Extinguishing Indian Land Title in Western Oregon.” Indian History
7:2 (1974): 10-14, 52.
_____. Land: Its Use and Abuse in Oregon, 1848-1910. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University, 1974.
_____. Landscape of Promise: The Oregon Story, 1800-1940. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997.
Shippee, Lester Burrell. “The Federal Relations of Oregon–VII: The Territory of Oregon.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 20:4 (December 1919): 345-70.
Spores, Ronald. “Too Small a Place: The Removal of the Willamette Valley Indians, 1850-1856.” American Indian Quarterly 17:2 (1993): 171-191.
Theisen, Lee Scott. “The Oregon Superintendency of Indian Affairs, 1853-1856.” Pacific Historian 22:2 (1978): 184-195.
White, C. Albert. A Casebook of Oregon Donation Land Claims. Oregon City: LLM Publications, 2001.
_____. A History of the Rectangular Survey System. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, 1983.
Baseline Classification. Encompasses the federal land surveys of Oregon
beginning in 1851.]
Records of the Office of the Surveyor General of Oregon. RG 49.7.10. Textual Records (NARA-Seattle): Letters sent to the Commissioner, 1851-1921; deputy surveyors, 1875-1904; and land offices, 1856-1906. Letters received from the Commissioner, 1865-1913; deputy surveyors, 1851-1902; and land offices, 18731903. Miscellaneous letters sent, 1851-1921, and received, 1851-1913. Registers of donation land claims, 1853- 1910. Contracts and bonds for surveys, 1851-1910.
Records of Oregon Land Offices. RG 49.9.24. Textual Records (NARA-Seattle): Records of the Portland land office (1905-27) and its predecessor at Oregon City (18541905), consisting of letters received by the register and receiver, 1858-1915; Oregon Donation Land Claims land entry papers, 1853- 1900; registers of cash sales and land entries, 1857-1908; Oregon Donation Land Claims land entry papers, 1857- 80; registers of cash sales and land entries, 1863-1908.
An Act to Create the Office of Surveyor-General of the Public Lands in Oregon, and to provide for the Survey, and to make Donations to Settlers of the Said Public Lands. 27 September 1850. U.S. Statutes at Large 9:496-500.
An Act to Amend an Act Entitled, “An Act to Establish the Territorial Government of Oregon.” 7 January 1853. U.S. Statutes at Large 10:150.
An Act to Amend an Act Entitled, “An Act to Create the Office of Surveyor-General of the Public Lands in Oregon and to Provide for the Survey, and to Make Donations to the Settlers of the Said Public Lands.” 14 February 1853. U.S. Statutes at Large 10:158-60.. .”]
An Act to Amend the Act Approved September Twenty-seven, Eighteen Hundred and Fifty, to Create the Office of Surveyor-General of the Public Lands in Oregon, etc., and Also the Act Amendatory Thereof, Approved February Fourteen, Eighteen Hundred and Fifty-three. 17 July 1854 U.S. Statutes at Large 10: 305
06.
Oregon Parks and Recreation Department. State Parks. Willamette Stone State Park. URL: http://www.oregonstateparks.org/park_246.php