This history of the native peoples of western Oregon is a systematic study of the formation, application and effects of United States Indian policy. Historian E.A. Schwartz tells how contacts with whites early in the nineteenth century culminated in the pork-barrel Rogue River War of 1855-56, in which the Rogue River peoples demonstrated superior tactics and repeatedly drove off more-numerous opponents. Schwartz narrates how the Indian peoples known...

The land has changed much in the century and a half since the Rogue River Wars raged through Southern Oregon. Despite being one of the longest and deadliest of all Indian Wars in the West, it remains largely forgotten. But the land endures, and much remains to take the observant traveler back in time. Photographer Rich Bergeman has explored the Rogue Country in search of landscapes from those years in order to create these compelling images and help...