The Coquille Indian Tribe ( ) is the

federally recognized This is a list of federally recognized tribes in the contiguous United States of America. There are also federally recognized Alaska Native tribes. , 574 Indian tribes were legally recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) of the United ...

Native American tribe of the

Coquille people The Coquille ( , sometimes spelled Ko-Kwel) are a Native American people who historically lived in the Coquille River watershed and nearby coast south of Coos Bay. They were signatories of the Oregon Coast Tribes Treaty of 1855 and were subseque ...

who have traditionally lived on the southern

Oregon Coast The Oregon Coast is a coastal region of the U.S. state of Oregon. It is bordered by the Pacific Ocean to its west and the Oregon Coast Range to the east, and stretches approximately from the California state border in the south to the Columbia ...

History

Pre-contact through the mid-19th century

Beginning in 1847, following the Cayuse Indian slaughter of the white, Presbyterian missionaries at the "Whitman Mission", a serious of retaliatory attacks ensued against the indigenous peoples all throughout the

Oregon Territory The Territory of Oregon was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from August 14, 1848, until February 14, 1859, when the southwestern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Oregon. Ori ...

, perpetrated by both miners and settlers. By 1854, several dozen miners who were angry over an altercation with a native man, went into the Coquille Indian village in what is now

Bandon, Oregon Bandon () is a city in Coos County, Oregon, United States, on the south side of the mouth of the Coquille River. It was named by George Bennet, an Irish peer, who settled nearby in 1873 and named the town after Bandon in Ireland, his hometown. ...

, and killed all the members of that tribe that they could find there, burning their houses and slaughtering all women and children.

Treaty with the United States

In 1855,

Joel Palmer General Joel Palmer (October 4, 1810 – June 9, 1881) was an American pioneer of the Oregon Territory in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. He was born in Canada, and spent his early years in New York and Pennsylvania before serving ...

, Oregon Superintendent of Indian Affairs, negotiated a treaty with the Coquille and surrounding tribes that set aside of coastline extending from the

Siltcoos River The Siltcoos River is a stream on the central coast of the U.S. state of Oregon. It begins at Siltcoos Lake, which straddles the border between Douglas and Lane counties. The river meanders generally west to the Pacific Ocean. It is located abou ...

to Cape Lookout to form the

Coastal The coast, also known as the coastline or seashore, is defined as the area where land meets the ocean, or as a line that forms the boundary between the land and the coastline. The Earth has around of coastline. Coasts are important zones in n ...

(or Siletz) Indian Reservation near present-day

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

. The Coquille people were forcibly marched to the reservation in 1856; however, the treaty was never ratified by Congress. Disease and overcrowding were problems on the reservation, which was eventually reduced to a fraction of its former size. The remnants of the original Coastal Indian Reservation are contained in the

Siletz Reservation The Siletz Reservation is a 5.852 sq mi (15.157 km²) Indian reservation in Lincoln County, Oregon, United States, owned by the Confederated Tribes of Siletz. The reservation is made up of numerous non-contiguous parcels of land in east-centra ...

and associated tribally owned lands. Over the years many Coquilles returned to their traditional homeland and fought for acknowledgement of the Treaty of 1855.

Termination and restoration

The U.S. federal government terminated its recognition of the Coquille as part of the

Western Oregon Indian Termination Act The Western Oregon Indian Termination Act or Public Law 588, was passed in August 1954 as part of the United States Indian termination policy. It called for the termination of federal supervision over the trust and restricted property of numerous ...

. In 1989 the tribe regained its federal recognition. With restoration came

tribal sovereignty Tribal sovereignty in the United States is the concept of the inherent authority of indigenous tribes to govern themselves within the borders of the United States. Originally, the U.S. federal government recognized American Indian trib ...

, which gives the tribe authority to form its own government and have jurisdiction over tribal lands, businesses, and community members.

Name origin

According to the Tribe's website, the name comes from a native word for

lamprey Lampreys (sometimes inaccurately called lamprey eels) are an ancient extant lineage of jawless fish of the order Petromyzontiformes , placed in the superclass Cyclostomata. The adult lamprey may be characterized by a toothed, funnel-like s ...

, a staple food for the tribe. European settlers approximated the word as but it came to be spelled Coquille (the French word for shell). Eventually the pronunciation of the

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

and

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...

shifted to , but the tribe's name retained the older pronunciation.

Coquille Indian Reservation

The

Confederated Tribes of Siletz The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians in the United States is a federally recognized confederation of more than 27 Native American tribes and bands who once inhabited an extensive homeland of more than 20 million acres from northern Califo ...

, based in

Siletz, Oregon Siletz ( , Tolowa: sii-let-ts’i ) is a city in Lincoln County, Oregon, United States. The population was 1,212 at the 2010 census. The city is located next to the Siletz Reservation and is the site of the annual Nesika Illahee Pow Wow in Augus ...

, recognize the Coquille people as one of the tribes that make up their confederation. The Confederated Tribes of Siletz continue to live on the

Siletz Indian Reservation The Siletz Reservation is a 5.852 sq mi (15.157 km²) Indian reservation in Lincoln County, Oregon, United States, owned by the Confederated Tribes of Siletz. The reservation is made up of numerous non-contiguous parcels of land in east-centra ...

. In addition, by an Act of Congress in 1996, the Coquille Tribe now has reservation area totaling . The 2000 census listed the reservation's official resident population as 258 people. The reservation's lands are located in numerous non-contiguous parcels of land in southern Coos County, mostly in and to the southeast of the

Coos Bay Coos Bay is an estuary where the Coos River enters the Pacific Ocean, the estuary is approximately 12 miles long and up to two miles wide. It is the largest estuary completely within Oregon state lines. The Coos Bay watershed covers an area of abou ...

- North Bend urban area. Parts of the communities of Bandon, Barview, Coos Bay, and North Bend extend onto reservation lands.

Forest management

The "Oregon Resources Conservation Act of 1996" (part o
Public Law 104-208
restored to the Coquille Tribe approximately of forest in Coos County, Oregon. The act's author, Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield, said of the Coquille Forest: "I hope this proposal, with its relatively modest acreage and the required adherence to the most environmentally friendly forest management plan ever implemented in the Pacific Northwest—President Clinton's forest plan—is successful and can become a model for how our Nation deals with other claims by native American tribes." The Forest was formally taken into trust for the Tribe by the U.S. government on September 30, 1998. The Coquille Forest comprises fourteen separate parcels of former BLM timberlands in eastern Coos County. Unlike other forests held in trust for and managed by federally recognized tribes, under the National Indian Forest Resources Management Act, the Coquille Forest has the additional requirement of meeting the "standards and guidelines" of adjacent federal forests, such as the

Northwest Forest Plan The Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) is a series of federal policies and guidelines governing land use on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It covers 10 million hectares within Western Oregon and Washington as well ...

. While most federal forests have not met their timber production expectations under the Northwest Forest Plan, the Coquille Forest is widely considered the only entity to meet both the ecological and economic outputs of the Northwest Forest Plan. In 2011, the U.S. Secretary of Interior endorsed the first component of th
landscape management proposal
in which the Coquille Indian Tribe and the BLM would work together to develop a demonstration timber sale pilot in coordination with professors Norm Johnson and Jerry Franklin. This pilot will demonstrate the professors' ecological principles of variable retention regeneration harvest in the Oregon Coast Range. The timber sale will be designed under the Northwest Forest Plan and comply with all BLM requirements. Management of the Coquille Forest has earned recognition for being environmentally sound and sustainable. The Forest Stewardship Council certified the Coquille Forest in September 2011.

Government

The tribal government is based in North Bend. In 2008 the tribe legalized

same-sex marriage Same-sex marriage, also known as gay marriage, is the marriage of two people of the same Legal sex and gender, sex or gender. marriage between same-sex couples is legally performed and recognized in 33 countries, with the most recent being ...

, becoming the first tribal nation to do so in the United States. Although the Oregon voters approved an amendment to the

Oregon Constitution The Oregon Constitution is the governing document of the U.S. state of Oregon, originally enacted in 1857. As amended the current state constitution contains eighteen sections, beginning with a bill of rights.

in 2004 to prohibit such marriages, the Coquille are not bound by the Oregon Constitution, because they are a federally recognized

sovereign nation A nation state is a political unit where the state and nation are congruent. It is a more precise concept than "country", since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group. A nation, in the sense of a common ethnicity, may inc ...

. The Coquille Indian Tribe Library contains an extensive amount of information on the Coquille Indian Tribe and other Tribes of southwest Oregon including the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians.

Economy

The Coquille Tribe owns several businesses, includin
The Mill Casino • Hotel
in

, and ORCA Communications, a

telecommunication Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

s provider. In September 2012, the tribe announced plans for a casino in Medford, to be built in a bowling alley that was acquired for $1.6 million. The tribe is also leasing an adjacent golf course.

Notes

References

Coquille Reservation and Off-Reservation Trust Land, Oregon
United States Census Bureau

External links

Coquille Indian Tribe
official website

the newsletter of the Coquille Indian Tribe
CEDCO Coquille Economic Development CorporationMap of the original Coastal Indian Reservation as of 1855
{{authority control Native American tribes in Oregon Federally recognized tribes in the United States Coos tribe