History
For centuries the South Umpqua River and Cow Creek were the homelands for the Umpqua Indians. However, gold was discovered on the South Umpqua River in 1848 causing an influx of gold miners and the homesteaders found the rich agricultural land of the area desirable.
In 1853 a treaty was negotiated between Joel Palmer, Superintendent of Indians, representing the Government of the United States and Chief Quintioosan and others, representing the Cow Creek Band of the Umpqua people. Although the US Government ratified the treaty, the terms agreed upon in the treaty were never honored.
Beginning in the 1820s, trappers and traders of the Hudson's Bay Company began using the South Umpqua River valley to move along what became known as the Siskiyou Trail. The Siskiyou Trail was based on existing Indian footpaths, and became an important link between the Pacific Northwest and California's Central Valley.
In 1846, spurred by the desire to create a safer trail for emigrants to use to reach the Willamette Valley, Jesse and Lindsay Applegate, Levi Scott, and 13 other companions explored a new route through the valley that connected the southern Willamette Valley with Goose Lake in Northern California. This trail became known as the Applegate Trail, and linked up with the northernmost branch of the California Trail.
Interstate 5 closely follows the original Siskiyou Trail route through the valley today.
Read more about this topic: South Umpqua River
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“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)