Old Myths, Turned on Their Heads: Settler Agency, Federal Authority, and the Colonization of Oregon

Abstract:The modern historiography of Oregon's settler colonization distances itself radically from the euphemistic accounts that were common into the mid-twentieth century. Some assumptions, however, are rarely challenged. In his article, author Julius Wilm addresses three areas where local agency continues to be overemphasized in modern historiography at the expense of national forces or it is misunderstood in its effects. The article covers the negotiation of the “Oregon Question” in the U.S. Congress during the late 1830s and early 1840s, the passage of the Donation Land Claim Act in 1850, and the extreme violence of settler militias against Indigenous people in the war of 1855–1856. As Wilm argues, “re-introducing the U.S. government as an important agent of Oregon’s colonization…provides crucial context for the colonial push into the Pacific Northwest and the violence it unleashed.”