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Mark Tveskov, an associate professor of anthropology at Southern Oregon University, displays a decoration from a tobacco pipe Friday, at the site of Fort Lane, built in 1853 to protect local Indians from gold miners and other pioneers of the Rogue Valley of Oregon. The artifact was found in the remains of a settler's cabin that was burned by Indians before construction of the fort. Tveskov called the fort one of the most important historical sites in the Rogue Valley. (AP Photo/Jeff Barnard)
GOLD HILL, Ore. (AP) — More than 150 years after the Rogue Indian Wars, Fort Lane has melted into a field covered with star thistle, with little but foundation stones, clay pipes and brass buttons to show for the federal government’s efforts to protect local Indians from gold miners and pioneers intent on extermination.
For the past two weeks, Mark Tveskov, associate professor of anthropology at Southern Oregon University, and a crew of students and Southern Oregon Historical Society volunteers have been uncovering what is left with whisk and trowel, after more than a century of scavenging. It is the most extensive academic archaeological excavation to date of the site listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
“This was the first tangible presence of the federal government or any civil authority in the Rogue Valley,” said Tveskov, dressed in long-sleeved shirt, jeans and cap against the ticks and sun and cowboy boots against the star thistle. “Unlike, say, the stereotypical Western vision of Fort Apache, the primary mission of this fort was to protect the Indians from the whites in that period of time.”
Built in 1853 on what is still rural land owned by Jackson County overlooking Lower Table Rock and the Rogue River, the fort is marked by a monument made of stones scavenged from the foundations of the cabins that housed a company of dragoons.
The fort has a hard time telling its own story any more. After the Army abandoned the site in 1856, local settlers quickly collected the bricks used to build the chimneys. The logs had turned to dust by 1900. The bronze plaque from the monument was stolen years ago.
The foundations were still visible underneath the star thistle as late as the 1970s, but now the only signs it was here are the square plots where students and volunteers have dug a few inches into the ground. Many of the artifacts, still being sought by enthusiasts with metal detectors, have ended up in private collections.
Despite all that, “We’re finding things in certain places that give us a much better view of the fort than before,” said student Jeremy Nichols as he picked at the fireplace of an officer’s cabin a century and a half old.
Whites traveling between California and the Willamette Valley had been passing through here since the 1830s on an old Indian trail that traces the same route as Interstate 5, but the first permanent white settlement didn’t come until 1851, following the discovery of gold.
When the fort was built two years later, there was a small settlement in Jacksonville, the economic center of the gold rush, grain mills in Ashland, and scattered cabins.
“Once the gold rush came, white settlement of the Rogue Valley was a quick bloom and conflict with the Indian population was almost instantaneous,” said Tveskov.
Indians angry at the invasion of their homeland and fouling of their salmon streams by mining attacked the pioneers and the pioneers attacked the Indians, even when they were on their reservation.
“If you read the pioneer correspondence of the time, they didn’t like the Army officers, because they didn’t play into this, ‘Let’s go kill the Indians,’ game,” Tveskov said.
Indian leaders tired of fighting signed a treaty in 1853 that created the Table Rocks Indian Reservation, the first in the Northwest, said Tveskov. It stretched from the Rogue River back between Evans Creek and Little Butte Creek through what is still called Sams Valley after one of the chiefs to the Rogue-Umpqua Divide in the Cascade Range.
Fort Lane, named for Joseph Lane, Oregon’s first territorial governor, was built in the same year on a bench overlooking the reservation. There was no stockade, just a dozen log cabins arranged in a U shape.
It did not stop a band of pioneers from raiding the reservation, killing some 20 Indians, in 1855. The leader, James Lupton, was killed by an Indian arrow.
“The pioneers were basically clamoring to kill off the Indians or have them moved out of here,” Tveskov said.
Some Indians chose to fight, and headed down the rugged Rogue River Canyon, burning pioneer cabins as they went. Following a series of battles with militia, they surrendered in 1856. Both those who fought and those who stayed on the reservation were herded up a trail of tears to Indian agencies in the Coast Range, where their descendants now run two of the most successful casinos in Oregon.
Based on a map and a perspective drawing of the site by commanding officer Capt. Andrew Jackson Smith found in the National Archives, Tveskov had a good idea what he was looking for.
Magnetometer readings and small mounds in the earth led him to the foundations of one of the officers’ cabins, the guardhouse, and a storehouse, as well as a pioneer cabin burned by Indians before the fort was built that had been occupied by Albert B. Jennison and his family, who had homesteaded the site.
“It all burned down in place with much of the artifacts of everyday life,” said Tveskov. “So it’s like a slice in time, burned in time.”
In the ashes, excavators found a mouth harp, blue trade beads, a fragment of a spoon, a bronze earring, buttons, fishhooks, clothing hooks and eyes, lacy underwear, nails, fragments of tobacco pipes, pieces of window glass and bottles, and bones from ducks and deer.
Around the fort, they found military buttons, and buckles, and a .58-cal. lead ball. In the fireplace of the officers’ cabin was a faceted red glass bead.
At the end of their work, the excavators shoveled the dirt they had dug by hand and sifted for artifacts back over the excavations, hoping that they will be left alone.
“Now we’ll go back to the lab and process this stuff and think about it,” said Tveskov.
For the past two weeks, Mark Tveskov, associate professor of anthropology at Southern Oregon University, and a crew of students and Southern Oregon Historical Society volunteers have been uncovering what is left with whisk and trowel, after more than a century of scavenging. It is the most extensive academic archaeological excavation to date of the site listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
“This was the first tangible presence of the federal government or any civil authority in the Rogue Valley,” said Tveskov, dressed in long-sleeved shirt, jeans and cap against the ticks and sun and cowboy boots against the star thistle. “Unlike, say, the stereotypical Western vision of Fort Apache, the primary mission of this fort was to protect the Indians from the whites in that period of time.”
Built in 1853 on what is still rural land owned by Jackson County overlooking Lower Table Rock and the Rogue River, the fort is marked by a monument made of stones scavenged from the foundations of the cabins that housed a company of dragoons.
The fort has a hard time telling its own story any more. After the Army abandoned the site in 1856, local settlers quickly collected the bricks used to build the chimneys. The logs had turned to dust by 1900. The bronze plaque from the monument was stolen years ago.
The foundations were still visible underneath the star thistle as late as the 1970s, but now the only signs it was here are the square plots where students and volunteers have dug a few inches into the ground. Many of the artifacts, still being sought by enthusiasts with metal detectors, have ended up in private collections.
Despite all that, “We’re finding things in certain places that give us a much better view of the fort than before,” said student Jeremy Nichols as he picked at the fireplace of an officer’s cabin a century and a half old.
Whites traveling between California and the Willamette Valley had been passing through here since the 1830s on an old Indian trail that traces the same route as Interstate 5, but the first permanent white settlement didn’t come until 1851, following the discovery of gold.
When the fort was built two years later, there was a small settlement in Jacksonville, the economic center of the gold rush, grain mills in Ashland, and scattered cabins.
“Once the gold rush came, white settlement of the Rogue Valley was a quick bloom and conflict with the Indian population was almost instantaneous,” said Tveskov.
Indians angry at the invasion of their homeland and fouling of their salmon streams by mining attacked the pioneers and the pioneers attacked the Indians, even when they were on their reservation.
“If you read the pioneer correspondence of the time, they didn’t like the Army officers, because they didn’t play into this, ‘Let’s go kill the Indians,’ game,” Tveskov said.
Indian leaders tired of fighting signed a treaty in 1853 that created the Table Rocks Indian Reservation, the first in the Northwest, said Tveskov. It stretched from the Rogue River back between Evans Creek and Little Butte Creek through what is still called Sams Valley after one of the chiefs to the Rogue-Umpqua Divide in the Cascade Range.
Fort Lane, named for Joseph Lane, Oregon’s first territorial governor, was built in the same year on a bench overlooking the reservation. There was no stockade, just a dozen log cabins arranged in a U shape.
It did not stop a band of pioneers from raiding the reservation, killing some 20 Indians, in 1855. The leader, James Lupton, was killed by an Indian arrow.
“The pioneers were basically clamoring to kill off the Indians or have them moved out of here,” Tveskov said.
Some Indians chose to fight, and headed down the rugged Rogue River Canyon, burning pioneer cabins as they went. Following a series of battles with militia, they surrendered in 1856. Both those who fought and those who stayed on the reservation were herded up a trail of tears to Indian agencies in the Coast Range, where their descendants now run two of the most successful casinos in Oregon.
Based on a map and a perspective drawing of the site by commanding officer Capt. Andrew Jackson Smith found in the National Archives, Tveskov had a good idea what he was looking for.
Magnetometer readings and small mounds in the earth led him to the foundations of one of the officers’ cabins, the guardhouse, and a storehouse, as well as a pioneer cabin burned by Indians before the fort was built that had been occupied by Albert B. Jennison and his family, who had homesteaded the site.
“It all burned down in place with much of the artifacts of everyday life,” said Tveskov. “So it’s like a slice in time, burned in time.”
In the ashes, excavators found a mouth harp, blue trade beads, a fragment of a spoon, a bronze earring, buttons, fishhooks, clothing hooks and eyes, lacy underwear, nails, fragments of tobacco pipes, pieces of window glass and bottles, and bones from ducks and deer.
Around the fort, they found military buttons, and buckles, and a .58-cal. lead ball. In the fireplace of the officers’ cabin was a faceted red glass bead.
At the end of their work, the excavators shoveled the dirt they had dug by hand and sifted for artifacts back over the excavations, hoping that they will be left alone.
“Now we’ll go back to the lab and process this stuff and think about it,” said Tveskov.
