Cayuse people

that's been erased or, you know, forgotten about.

Before Eastern Oregon ever existed, the land where it now sits made up the homelands of indigenous people like the Umatilla, Cayuse, and Northern Paiute peoples.

They were the original stewards of this land.

They began to be forced off their land as European settlers arrived in the 1800s.

Sources trace the company all the way back to a mill in Oregon in the late 1800s.

And by 1909 when the Bishop family took it over, they started producing what was called trade blankets, specifically designed with patterns and colors that would appeal to tribes across the West, the Umatilla, Cayuse, Nez Perce, and Walla Walla peoples.

These blankets became genuinely treasured items.

Sources say they are still used today to mark major life events in some native communities, births, weddings, sometimes even funerals.

That's, that's the point of this episode right now.

There's another site I wanna talk about in Southeast Washington, the Cayuse people in the land along the, the Umatilla, right? I've never heard of this group of people, and they were particularly good hunters, right?

Yes.

I haven't studied the Cayuse a lot, but one thing you said really brings a thought to mind is that people don't have an understanding of the diversity, and there are many Native American groups they may never have heard of.

There are a couple volumes out that list from the early 1900s the existing groups that were documented at that time.

There's over 6,000 distinct groups.

a grassy plain near present-day Walla Walla, Washington.

About 5,000 Native people have gathered from five different tribes, the Walla Walla, Yakima, Nez Perce, Umatilla, and the Cayuse.

They're here to negotiate a treaty, one that will change the shape of the United States.

a man named Isaac Stevens steps out to address the crowd.

But the reason the annexation happens at this precise moment, that goes back to a really particular event.

What some call a justified killing and others call a massacre.

The Whitmans were white missionaries living near one of these tribes, the Cayuse.

And after the Whitmans die, life for Native Americans in this region is never the same.