Blossoming fruit trees create a striking foreground to one of the Table Rocks. Guided hikes will explore the landforms’ flora, natural history and significance to Indian tribes as well as their appeal as a subject for sketching and photography. (Mail Tribune / Roy Musitelli)When Robert Kentta leads a hike up Lower Table Rock on the morning of April 29, he will be following the steps of his ancestors.
Kentta is the cultural resources director and member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians whose great grandfather was among those making a forced march from the Table Rock Indian Reservation in 1856 to the Siletz Reservation.
"I will be thinking about all the good times our people must have had in that area," he said. "But I will also be thinking about the rough times during the removal of our people."
Kentta is one of the hike leaders in the annual weekend spring hikes on the Table Rocks that begin Saturday offered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and The Nature Conservancy. He will discuss the history and culture of ancestral tribes who once lived in the Rogue Valley.
"The Table Rocks figure prominently in our creation stories and in the history of our people going back tens of thousands of years," Kentta said. "They are very ancient land forms which are still special for our people today.
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Before the short-lived Table Rock Indian Reservation was established in 1853, Takelma, Shasta and Athabascan Indians from the Applegate Valley had villages in the region, he said.
Gold had been discovered near Jacksonville in 1852, bringing a gold rush that brought conflict with local Indians. To reduce that conflict, the reservation was created, covering the area from what is now White City to the mouth of Little Butte Creek west to Evans Creek and north to what is now Sams Valley.
The reservation was the result of the Rogue River Treaty of 1853 which was signed near the Table Rocks. In that treaty a huge expanse of land estimated to be more than 2 million acres was handed over to the U.S. government for $60,000.
The treaty was the first in the Oregon Territory — Oregon became a state in 1859 — to be ratified by the U.S. Senate when it was approved in April 1854. President Franklin Pierce signed the treaty in 1855.
The 1853 price was $60,000, less $15,000 to be paid to settlers for various costs incurred before the treaty was signed. The treaty was initially signed by Chief Sam, known as Ko-Ko-Ha-Wah, and four other chiefs along with Gen. Joseph Lane representing the United States.
Although the treaty declared an end to hostilities between the Indians and the settlers, peace did not prevail. During the spring and summer of 1856, the U.S. Army forced 900 and 1,000 people, including Kentta's ancestors, to march north to the Siletz and Grand Ronde reservations west of Salem.
"It's not a regular part of classroom history taught today," Kentta said.
Kentta, who periodically speaks to groups about the Indian history of what is now Jackson County, will make a presentation of traditional basketry and regalia in the parking lot before leading the hike on April 29.
Some of the baskets will be historic while others were made in recent times.
"The old basket were made of pine and willow roots and hazel sticks," he said, noting all those native materials weren't available west of Salem. "We could get hazel sticks but we had to use spruce roots. It's also very difficult to get bear grass (up north)."
The Indians also found the cooler, damper climate west of Salem a far cry from the drier, hotter climate of their Rogue Valley homeland, he said.
"We still have connections to the Table Rocks," Kentta said. "Our people still feel strongly about that area."
