An Umatilla Account of the Whitman Massacre
Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

This week’s article will highlight an infamous event from Oregon’s territorial history: the Whitman Massacre of 1847, in which the missionaries Dr. Marcus and Narcissa Whitman were killed by Cayuse and Umatilla residents of the mission.  The precise causes of this violent episode were complicated, although it seems the perpetrators had been persuaded that the whites were trying to poison them.

Although this tale has often been told, what makes this version noteworthy is the teller.  She is Iphathalatalc of the Umatilla tribe, an aged woman at the time the article was written in 1903, but, in her youth, an actual eyewitness to many of the events described.  Although the reporter’s rendering of Iphathalatalc’s vernacular speech may well strike today’s readers as somewhat hackneyed, it is nonetheless fascinating to revisit this well-known historical episode from an authentic American Indian point of view.

Ip-ha-thal-a-talc’s Account–The Salt Lake Herald, November 22, 1903

Photograph by Major Lee Moorhouse, as captioned in Salt Lake Herald, November 22, 1903

The newspaper story is illustrated with four photographs taken by Major Lee Moorhouse of Pendleton.  These are only a tiny fraction of the thousands of photographic images of Indian life Moorhouse captured as Agent for the Umatilla Reservation between 1888 and 1916.  This body of work is of great historic importance, and is held in the permanent Archives of the University of Oregon Libraries.  A portion of the collection has been digitized, and can be accessed on the UO Libraries website:

Picturing the Cayuse, Walla Walla and Umatilla Tribes–UO Libraries Digital Collections  —Jason A. Stone

Talking About The Weather
Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

For our next installment of historic newspaper content from the Chronicling America website, I’ve chosen to focus on a topic that is very much on the minds of “wet side” residents at this time of year… namely, our infamously rainy winter weather.  With the first few days of sunshine arriving intermittently throughout February, we begin looking forward to the beautiful spring that is just around the corner.

Oregon’s prevailing weather is often misunderstood by the rest of the country; the notion that it “rains all the time” everywhere in the state is still widespread.  Moreover, a look at the historical record persuades us that this is nothing new.  Here, for instance, is an article originally published in the Oregonian (as reprinted by The Washington Times (D.C.)) in 1905, attempting to inform the American public about our unique weather patterns.  That makes more than a century that we’ve been trying to dispel the “webfoot” stereotype!

Oregon’s Two Climates – The Washington Times, February 12, 1905

(Please note, the Oregon article is in the lower right hand corner of the linked page… try not to get too distracted by the adventures of the escaped giant in our nation’s capital!)

ODNP Receives Year 2 of LSTA Funding!
Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

The Oregon Digital Newspapers Program is happy to announce that we’ve received year 2 of funding through the Library Services & Technology Act (LSTA) distributed by the Oregon State Library. The funds provided by this second year of this grant will support our project manager, the continued development of k-12 lesson plans, and graphic design for our Oregon Digital Newspapers search interface.

Extra! Extra!
Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

We expect to begin posting our first digitized content from Oregon newspapers in the summer/fall of 2010.

In the meantime, you can still revisit Oregon’s history through the Library of Congress – National Endowment for the Humanities’ Chronicling America website. Keyword-searching the archived material from states that are already participating in NDNP can yield a wealth of articles about Oregon.

Over the next several weeks, we will be posting to this blog some links to get you started and  to convey some idea of what’s available.  We hope these historic materials will whet your appetite for the full online resource that’s to come!

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Our first item comes from the San Francisco Call, and commemorates the opening of the historic Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland:

“Fair Recalls Heroic Deeds Of Century Ago,”  from the San Francisco Call (CA), May 28, 1905

“Lewis & Clark,” from the San Francisco Call, May 28, 1905, p.17
Phase 1 Newspaper Titles
Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

The preliminary titles for Phase 1 of the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program have been selected.  (The title list is subject to change depending on quality of newspaper microfilm.)

National Digital Newspaper Program Titles:

Oregon Only Titles: