A brief history of our city...

The river terrace along the west bank of Willamette River downstream from the mouth of Oswego Creek was for thousands of years the home of Native Americans.  Distinctive stone projectile points, identified as Cascadia-type, were a mark of their technology.  The Cascadia points resemble the leaf of a willow and confirm Indian occupancy to more than 8,000 years before the present (BP).  The site is one of the oldest documented in the lower Willamette Valley.  Its attractions were several: good visibility of the river, drainage of rainfall, abundant salmon and lamprey, and access to the nearby camas meadows of the Tualatin Valley.  Sucker Creek, today Oswego Creek, was an important lamprey fishery.  In the nineteenth century the Multnomah and Clowewalla, speakers of an Upper Chinookan dialect, lived along the lower Willamette and shared the great salmon fishery at Willamette Falls with their Clackamas neighbors to the east and the Tualatin and Kalapuya to the south.

Prior to the negotiation and ratification of any treaties, Congress opened the Oregon Territory to settlers granting free land in 1850 through the Oregon Donation Land Act.  Belatedly in January, 1855, Joel Palmer, Oregon Superintendent of Indian Affairs, entered into a treaty with the Kalapuya and other tribes and bands of the Willamette.  They ceded their lands to the United States and were compelled to remove to the small Grand Ronde Reservation at the headwaters of the South Yamhill River in western Polk and Yamhill Counties.  Today, their descendants are the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde with more than 4,000 members.  The tribe's history and culture is preserved and shared in exhibits at Chachalu Museum and Cultural Center, Grand Ronde, Oregon.
*Special thanks to Prof. Stephen Beckham for his contribution of these paragraphs on Native Americans in the Oswego area.