The Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians trace their ancestry back to the aboriginal inhabitants of the South-Central coast of Oregon. The confederation is made up of three tribes (four Bands): two bands of Coos Tribes: Hanis Coos (Coos Proper), and Miluk Coos; the Lower Umpqua Tribe; and Siuslaw Tribe.
Official Tribal Name: Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians of Oregon
Address: 1245 Fulton Avenue, Coos Bay, OR 97420
Phone: 1-888-280-0726
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Email: Contact Form
Official Website: http://ctclusi.org/
Recognition Status: Federally Recognized
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Alternate names / Alternate spellings / Mispellings: Formerly the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians of Oregon
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Region: Northwest Coast
State(s) Today: Oregon
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Their historic homelands extended from the richly forested slopes of the Coastal Range in the East to the rocky shoreline of the Pacific Ocean in the West, a vast region of some 1.6 million acres.
The Coos tribe lived on the southwest Oregon Pacific Coast. The Hanis speaking Coos lived in what is now North Bend, while the Miluk speaking Coos lived on the South Slough. The Lower Umpqua lived up the Umpqua River which is named after them. The Siuslaw indians lived up the Siuslaw River.
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In 1855, four years before Oregon attained Statehood, a treaty was drafted by the federal government to allow for the peaceful acquisition and settlement of the Confederated Tribes ancestral lands. The treaty provided for compensation to the Tribes in terms of food, clothing, employment, education and health benefits. The three Tribes agreed to the Treaty of 1855, and patiently waited for Congress to ratify it.
However, they waited in vain. The federal government chose to ignore the treaty, and it was never ratified by the United States Senate.
Reservations: Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Reservation and Off-Reservation Trust Land
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The people lived in villages of cedar plank houses on the margins of the extensive estuaries of the Siuslaw, Umpqua, and Coos rivers. This is an area of rugged cliffs and open beaches, bordered by shifting sand dunes and steep, heavily vegetated mountainsides. Each village was independent of the others, with each village having their own form of government that did not affect the other villages.
Most people within a village were related to each other by blood or marriage. People often visited other villages for social occasions, and to trade. During the summers, they would move to hunting camps in the surrounding mountains. They also navigated the rivers, and mountain ridge trails, to trade with other villages or journey to the Willamette and Camas Valleys for certain prized foods.
The Tribes had a distinct social stratification based on wealth measured in quantities of dentalium shells, woodpecker scalps, abalone shells, grey pine seeds, and clam shell disk money. The chief of the village was the wealthiest man. He was obligated to his people to use his wealth to benefit the people, and people in turn brought him food and gifts.
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They were hunter-gatherer societies who also fished. The men of the village hunted and fished, made projectile points, canoes, traps and house planks. The women picked berries, dug for roots and clams, helped fish, wove baskets, processed hides, dried meat, sewed clothing and cooked the food. Those who were too elderly or ill to help in gathering or processing of food, were given food by everyone else in the village. Food was always shared, and no one went hungry.
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The Tribal youth participated in “spirit quests,” a rite of passage allowing them to come to terms with their spiritual values, and obtain a spiritual helper. Some would then begin their path to become shamans, doctors and ceremonial leaders amongst the tribes.
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Catastrophic Events:
In 1824 smallpox entirely wiped out the Hanis Coos Indian village at Tenmile Lakes.
In 1836 a measles outbreak struck indian villages on the Coos Bay reducing the population from 2,000 to 800.
Tribe History:
Within a year of the Indians’ signing of the 1855 treaty, the Coos Indians were rounded up and forcefully marched to a military fort, Fort Umpqua, where they were held prisoner for four years along with the Lower Umpqua.
Four years later, they were marched 60 miles up the coast to a reservation on the Yachats River. This long trek was their “Trail of Tears”, and within a short time at the reservation, many died of hunger, exposure, mistreatment, and sheer exhaustion.
Once there, they were imprisoned for 17 years and forced to give up their traditional culture for farming, on a coastal plain ill-suited to agriculture. Fifty percent of the Tribal members died during this period due to the deplorable conditions including starvation, mistreatment, and disease.
Along with loss of their homelands to white settlement, federal promises of just treatment were persistently broken over the ensuing 100 years.
In 1856, the bloody Rogue River War broke out between whites and Indians to the south. The military decided to prevent the Coos from getting involved by rounding up most of them and putting them in Fort Umpqua, a new structure on a spit of the Umpqua River.
In 1860, they were moved to the Alsea subagency in Yachats. In 1876, the subagency was handed over to white settlement and the tribes were assigned to the Siletz Reservation, which created a major disruption among the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw bands. Many declined to move.
In 1876, the Yachats area was opened for pioneer settlement, and the Tribal members were released to return to their homelands that had been changed forever. Indeed, they found that their homes no longer existed and they became wanderers, settling wherever they could fit in amongst the new pioneer homesteads.
Those Tribal members who stayed in the area found menial jobs or worked in the fields as harvesters. They kept their Tribal identity alive by meeting monthly and observing special celebrations through the year. In 1916, the Tribes established a formal, elected tribal government that they have maintained ever since.
Then, in 1941, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) took a small privately donated parcel (6.12 acres) into trust for the Confederated Tribes in the city of Coos Bay. On this small “reservation”, the BIA also erected a Tribal Hall that included an assembly hall, kitchen, offices and medical clinic. It is still in use today and is on the Register of Historic Places.
In the late 1940’s, the U.S. government started action to withdraw recognition of some Indian tribes. The Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians voted to strongly oppose termination. However, without their knowledge or consent, they were included in the Western Oregon Termination Act of 1954. To quote:
”The blatant lack of participation in the process is most evident among the Indians of Southwest Oregon. The Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw never passed a resolution in favor of termination, and were adamantly opposed [to it]. In 1948, the Coos, Lower Umpquas [sic] sent forty-eight delegates to the Siletz Reservation to express their disapproval of termination; but were not allowed to make their case, as they had been locked out of the meeting and [were] told the termination bill did not affect them”.
Even though the U.S. government officially terminated them, the Confederated Tribes never sold their small reservation and Tribal Hall, and, instead, maintained it. During the Termination Years (1954 to 1984), the Confederated Tribes attempted to provide services to its members with the few resources that they had. They also continued to fight for restoration, and recognition as a sovereign nation.
Then, on October 17, 1984, as a result of a long moral, legal and legislative battle, President Ronald Reagan restored the Tribes to federal recognition by signing Public Law 98-481. The Tribes’ sovereignty was once again recognized and funding was restored for education, housing and health programs. In 1987, the Tribe approved a constitution and began to lay the groundwork for a self-sufficiency plan.
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