The Takelma (also Dagelma) are a
Native American people who originally lived in the
Rogue Valley
The Rogue Valley is a valley region in southwestern Oregon in the United States. Located along the middle Rogue River and its tributaries in Josephine and Jackson counties, the valley forms the cultural and economic heart of Southern Oregon nea ...
of interior southwestern
Oregon
Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...
.
Most of their villages were sited along the
Rogue River. The name ''Takelma'' means "(Those) Along the River".
History
Much less is known about the lifeways of the Takelma Indians than about their neighbors in other parts of Oregon and
northern California
Northern California (colloquially known as NorCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. Spanning the state's northernmost 48 counties, its main population centers incl ...
. Their homeland was settled by Euroamericans late in the history of the American Frontier, because the surrounding mountainous country protected it. But once colonization began, it proceeded rapidly. The discovery of gold spurred the first white settlement of the region in 1852. The Takelma who survived were sent to reservations in 1856. Settlers and natives lived in the region together for less than four years.
Because Takelma territory included the most agriculturally attractive part of the Rogue Valley, particularly along the Rogue River itself, their valuable land was preferentially seized and settled by Euroamerican settlers in the mid-19th century. Almost without exception, these newcomers had little or no interest in learning about their indigenous neighbors, and they considered them a dangerous nuisance. They recorded little about the Takelma, beyond documenting their own perspective on conflicts. Native Americans living near the Takelma but on more marginal and rugged land, such as the
Shastan and Rogue River
Athabascan
Athabaskan (also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large family of indigenous languages of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, Pacific Co ...
peoples, survived the colonization period with their cultures and languages more intact.
Conflicts between the settlers and the indigenous peoples of both coastal and interior southwest Oregon escalated and became known as the
Rogue River Wars
The Rogue River Wars were an armed conflict in 1855–1856 between the U.S. Army, local militias and volunteers, and the Native American tribes commonly grouped under the designation of Rogue River Indians, in the Rogue River Valley area o ...
. Nathan Douthit examined peaceful encounters between the whites and southern Oregon Indians, encounters he describes as "middle-ground" interactions, undertaken by "cultural intermediaries." Douthit argues that without such "middle-ground" contact, the Takelma and other southern Oregon Indians would have been exterminated rather than relocated.
In 1856, the
U.S. government forcibly relocated the Takelma who survived the Rogue Indian Wars to the
Coast Indian Reservation The Coast Indian Reservation is a former Indian reservation in the U.S. state of Oregon, established in 1855. It was gradually reduced in size and in the 21st century is known as the present-day Siletz Reservation.
History
The Coast Reservation wa ...
(today 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 ...
) on the rainy northern Oregon coast, an environment much different from the dry oak and chaparral country that they knew. Many died on the way to the Siletz Reservation and the
Grand Ronde Indian Reservation
The Grand Ronde Community is an Indian reservation located on several non-contiguous sections of land in southwestern Yamhill County and northwestern Polk County, Oregon, United States, about east of Lincoln City, near the community of Grand Ro ...
, which now exists as
Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. And many died on the reservations from disease, despair and inadequate diet.
Indian agent
In United States history, an Indian agent was an individual authorized to interact with American Indian tribes on behalf of the government.
Background
The federal regulation of Indian affairs in the United States first included development of t ...
s taught the surviving Takelma farming skills and discouraged them from speaking their own language, believing that their best chance for productive lives depended on their learning useful skills and the
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...
. On the reservations, the Takelma lived with Native Americans from different cultures; and their intermarriage with people of other cultures, both on and off the reservation, worked against the transmission of Takelman language and culture to Takelman descendants.
The Takelma spent many years in exile before anthropologists began to interview them and record information about their language and lifeways. Linguists
Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American Jewish anthropologist-linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States.
Sa ...
and
John Peabody Harrington
John Peabody Harrington (April 29, 1884 – October 21, 1961) was an American linguist and ethnologist and a specialist in the indigenous peoples of California. Harrington is noted for the massive volume of his documentary output, most of which h ...
worked with Takelma descendants.
In the late 1980s,
Agnes Baker Pilgrim
Agnes Emma Baker Pilgrim (September 11, 1924 – November 27, 2019) was a Native American spiritual elder from Grants Pass, Oregon. She was the oldest member of her tribe, the Takelma. She was also the granddaughter of Jack Harney, the first e ...
, granddaughter of Takelma chief George Harney, emerged as the most significant spokesperson for the Takelma.
"In 1994, on the banks of the
Applegate, the Takelma people performed a Sacred Salmon Ceremony for the first time in a century and a half ... Another endeavor, the Takelma Intertribal Project, starting in 2000, has worked to restore edible, medicinal, and basketry plants through traditional techniques of burning and pruning."
In the 2010 census, 16 people claimed Takelma ancestry, 5 of them full-blooded.
Culture
Environment and adaptation
The Takelman people lived as
foragers
A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...
, a term that many anthropologists consider more exact than
hunter-gatherers
A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...
. They collected plant foods and insects, fished and hunted. The Takelma cultivated only one crop, a native tobacco (''Nicotiana biglovii''). The Takelma lived in small bands of related men and their families. Interior southwest Oregon has pronounced seasons, and the ancient Takelma adapted to these seasons by spending spring, summer, and early fall months collecting and storing food for the winter season. The Rogue River, around which their villages nucleated, provided them with salmon and other fish.
Ancient salmon runs were reputedly large. The intensive and coordinated labor involved in large-scale capture of salmon with nets and spears by men, and their cleaning and drying by women, provided the Takelma with an excellent, protein-rich diet for much of the year, if the salmon runs were good. The salmon diet was supplemented, or replaced in years of poor salmon runs, by game such as deer, elk, beaver, bear, antelope, and bighorn sheep. (The last two species are now locally extinct.) Smaller mammals, such as squirrels, rabbits and gophers, might be snared by either men or women. Yellowjacket larvae and grasshoppers also provided calories.
The limiting factor in the Takelma diet was carbohydrates, since fish and game provided abundant fat and protein. To get the carbohydrates and vitamins needed for good health, the Takelma collected a variety of plant foods. However, consistent with
optimal foraging theory
Optimal foraging theory (OFT) is a behavioral ecology model that helps predict how an animal behaves when searching for food. Although obtaining food provides the animal with energy, searching for and capturing the food require both energy and t ...
, which suggests that humans, like other creatures, decide what foods to eat depending on what gives the greatest nutritional value for the work expended to get it, the Takelma strategically focused on two plant foods:
acorn
The acorn, or oaknut, is the nut of the oaks and their close relatives (genera ''Quercus'' and '' Lithocarpus'', in the family Fagaceae). It usually contains one seed (occasionally
two seeds), enclosed in a tough, leathery shell, and borne ...
s and camas, also known as
camassia
''Camassia'' is a genus of plants in the asparagus family native to North America. Common names include camas, quamash, Indian hyacinth, camash, and wild hyacinth.
It grows in the wild in great numbers in moist meadows. They are perennial p ...
. They harvested acorns from the two species of oaks in their Rogue Valley territory,
Oregon white oak
''Quercus garryana'' is an oak tree species of the Pacific Northwest, with a range stretching from southern California to southwestern British Columbia. It is commonly known as the Oregon white oak or Oregon oak or, in Canada, the Garry oak. It ...
and
California black oak
''Quercus kelloggii'', the California black oak, also known as Kellogg oak, is an oak in the red oak section (genus ''Quercus'', section ''Lobatae'', series ''Agrifoliae''), native to western North America. Although genetically separated from the ...
. When these foods were not available, or for variety in their diet, Takelma women also gathered and processed the seeds of native grasses and tarweed (''Madia elegans''), dug roots and collected small fruits.
Dwellings
During the winter months, the Takelma lived in semi-subterranean homes dug partly into the insulating earth with superstructures built of vertically placed
sugar pine
''Pinus lambertiana'' (commonly known as the sugar pine or sugar cone pine) is the tallest and most massive pine tree, and has the longest cones of any conifer. The species name ''lambertiana'' was given by the Scottish botanist David Douglas, ...
planks. Poorer people also lived in pole-and-bark dwellings, well banked with earth and dry leaves for insulation. Typically the planks rested on two 6-foot-tall vertical shafts that supported a horizontal central pole. Beds of
cat-tail
''Typha'' is a genus of about 30 species of monocotyledonous flowering plants in the family Typhaceae. These plants have a variety of common names, in British English as bulrush or reedmace, in American English as reed, cattail, or punks, in ...
mats were placed adjacent to the fire pit, with openings in the roof to allow for ventilation. Takelma homes bore structural similarities to the semi-subterranean homes of the
Klamath Klamath may refer to:
Ethnic groups
*Klamath people, a Native American people of California and Oregon
**Klamath Tribes, a federally recognized group of tribes in Oregon
*Klamath language, spoken by the Klamath people
Places in the United States
* ...
and
Modoc
Modoc may refer to:
Ethnic groups
*Modoc people, a Native American/First Nations people
** Modoc language
**Modoc Tribe of Oklahoma, a federally recognized tribe of Modoc
*Modoc War, the last armed resistance of the Modoc people in 1873
*The "Mo ...
peoples to the east, who spoke languages in the
Plateau Penutian
Plateau Penutian (also Shahapwailutan, Lepitan) is a family of languages spoken in northern California, reaching through central-western Oregon to northern Washington and central-northern Idaho.
Family division
Plateau Penutian consists of four ...
family, and to those of the
Shasta to the south, who spoke various
Shastan languages
The Shastan (or Sastean) family consisted of four languages, spoken in present-day northern California and southern Oregon:
# Konomihu ''(†)''
# New River Shasta ''(†)''
# Okwanuchu ''(†)''
# Shasta (also known as Shastika) ''(†)''
K ...
(which may be part of the hypothetical
Hokan
The Hokan language family is a hypothetical grouping of a dozen small language families that were spoken mainly in California, Arizona and Baja California.
Etymology
The name ''Hokan'' is loosely based on the word for "two" in the various Hokan ...
family). One historical account describes a rectangular, plank structure large enough to hold 100 people, but archaeologists in the region have typically found remains of much smaller dwellings. During the warmer months of summer Takelma lived in residences made of brush or forwent them altogether.
See also
*
Latgawa
Latgawa are Native American people who lived in the Rogue Valley of interior southwest Oregon. In their own language "Latgawa" means "those living in the uplands," though they were also known as the Walumskni by the neighboring Klamath tribe.
T ...
*
Takelma language
Takelma was the language spoken by the Latgawa and Takelma people and Cow Creek band of Upper Umpqua. It was first extensively described by Edward Sapir in his graduate thesis, ''The Takelma Language of Southwestern Oregon''. The last fluent ...
*
Takilma, Oregon
Takilma is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Josephine County, Oregon, United States, south of Cave Junction. It is located on the East Fork Illinois River, about a mile southeast of the ghost town of Waldo. As ...
* The US Navy "USS ''Takelma''", now the
ARA ''Suboficial Castillo'' (A-6), a patrol boat of the Argentine Navy
Notes
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
SOHS - The Takelma Indians of Southwestern Oregon
{{authority control
Native American tribes in Oregon
Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians
Rogue River (Oregon)