In November 1855, President Franklin Pierce established
the Siletz (Coast) Reservation

located along the Oregon coast between Cape Lookout in the north and the mouth of the Siltcoos River in the south. During 1856, the U.S. Army rounded up Native people from throughout Northern California and Southwest Oregon, including the Chetco and Tututni, forced them off of their ancestral lands, and relocated them to the Siletz Reservation. That summer, two groups of approximately 600-700 Indians each were loaded onto the steam ship “Columbia” at Port Orford, and were taken up the coast. They travelled up the Columbia River to the Willamette River to Dayton by boat, and were marched the rest of the way on foot. All of the southern coast Indians who were removed after these two shiploads “were forced to walk more than a hundred miles in a West Coast version of the Trail of Tears,” traveling for 33 days under the “escort” of 106 military personnel.

During the process of removing coastal Indians from their homes and relocating them on reservations, “it was not unusual for families to be intentionally separated by the military and Indian Agents in an effort to diminish the possibility of revolt and escape.” The Indians that survived were weakened by change of diet, starvation, exposure, brutality, and disease.44 From 1856-1857, hundreds of Indians died at the Siletz Reservation —and a great number more had died by the 1870s.45 For example, in 1854, it is estimated that there were 241 Chetcos at the Siletz Reservation (83 women, 117 men, and 41 children). By 1871, the total dropped to 63.

It is estimated that members of 27 different tribes were removed to the Siletz Reservation, and that 3,000-6,000 Indian people were relocated to the Siletz and Grand Ronde reservations during the 1850s. The Indians who survived life on the reservations received federal services, and formed confederated tribal governments (the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community). “Eventually, those who had been relocated north from the Rogue Valley began to accept that they were members of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz or Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, depending on where their family made their home. They were no longer separate tribes, but part of a larger, intertribal group.”