Blog featuring news and updates about collections, discoveries, exhibitions, and public programs of the University of Oregon Special Collections & University Archives
Laurean and Eutaxian Society Meeting, University Archives Photographs, UA Ref 3
Campus societies are a large portion of any university history, older universities such as Harvard or Yale pride themselves on their societies. The men and women who have participated in literary societies historically have found lucrative jobs and connections due to the unique experience that these societies provide to undergraduates. Literary societies were regularly founded in pairs in order to foster competition and growth. This history often brings to mind older institutions on the east coast. However, the University of Oregon is no stranger to the benefits of literary societies on its campus.
Political poster, Oregon Women’s Political Caucus Records, Coll 369, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Oregon Libraries, Eugene, Oregon
In honor of Women’s History Month, Special Collections and University Archives is highlighting the Oregon Women’s Political History Collection.
The Oregon Women’s Political History Collection comprises over a dozen individual manuscript collections. These collections constitute over 200 linear feet of manuscript material and represent women’s political and activist work in Oregon in the latter half of the twentieth century. The collection was started in the 1990s as a collaborative collection development effort among UO Libraries, the Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS), and the Friends of the Oregon Women’s Political History Collection.
The collections include:
Anderson, Jean Fuller Papers (Coll 312) 1978-1990, Finding aid
Davis, Eleanor Papers (Coll 351) 1963-1989 Finding aid
Dost, Jeanne Papers (Coll 366) 1972-1988 Finding aid
Dunn, Nancy Papers (Coll 362) 1986-1990 Finding aid
Eugene Women’s Crisis Center Records (Coll 313) 1977-1991 Finding aid
Fadeley, Nancy Papers (Coll 349) 1971-1989 Finding aid
Frye, Helen Papers (Coll 348) 1971-2011 Finding aid
Hendriksen, Margie Papers (Coll 365) 1971-1992 Finding aid
Kafoury, Gretchen Papers (Coll 353) 1971-1983 Finding aid
Milligan, Marian Papers (Coll 370) 1974-1983 Finding aid
Novick, Jane Papers (Coll 368) 1968-1990 Finding aid
Oregon Now Records (Coll 371) 1971-2006 Finding aid
Oregon Women’s Political Caucus Records (Coll 369) 1971-1999 Finding aid
Ryles, Nancy Papers (Coll 364) 1972-1990 Finding aid
The activist women represented in these collections worked to increase women’s political engagement in Oregon and empower women to fully participate in elective politics and government agencies at the local, county, and state levels. The story of women’s political work in Oregon in the mid-to-late twentieth century has not been fully told; these primary documents–the sources necessary for the writing of history–are essential to that process. Through support by LSTA funding administered by the Oregon State Library, grant project staff were able to process, catalog, and publish finding aids for these collections and provide access to these collections.
Researchers can find out more about related SCUA collections documenting Women, Gender, and Sexuality in our research guides.
Roger Dick, Jr. (Yakama) harvesting blueback from scaffold off Highway 14 near Sauter’s Beach; Lyle, Washington. [Jacqueline Moreau papers, Coll 459, Box 10, Folder 4; Special Collections and University Archives, University of Oregon Libraries, Eugene, Oregon.]“Salmon are the icon of this place. They are valued as food, as resources, and as a representation of the wildness and wilderness for which the Pacific Northwest is known. Whether they realize it or not, every single person in the Northwest is Wy-Kan-Ush-Pum. We are all Salmon People. Let us all work together to protect and restore salmon—this fish that unites us.”
–The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Commission
In honor of Native American Heritage Month the University of Oregon Libraries is pleased to announce an exhibit titled, Wy-Kan-Ush-Pum: We Are All Salmon People. This exhibit honors Oregon’s tribal communities and their traditional cultures, knowledges and lifeways that have sustained them since time immemorial. We first recognize and honor the Kalapuya people, who were the original indigenous inhabitants of the Willamette Valley, including the land that the University of Oregon resides. We are honored to now have the new residence hall, Kalapuya Ilihi Hall, named in honor of those who were here first and in recognition of their traditional homelands.
All of Oregon’s tribal communities share a common connection to their traditional homelands and natural resources provided by the creator that sustains life for their people. This exhibit highlights the tribal cultures along the Columbia River Basin that have a distinct sacred connection to salmon that has shaped their culture, diet, societies and religions for thousands of years. Salmon, or “wy-kan-ush” in the traditional language of Sahaptin, are revered as sacred and one of the most important aspects of tribal culture.
Special Collections and University Archives has recently added to its collections a manumission written in 1801 by Moses Hall of Nicholas County, Kentucky. This manuscript document is a contract stating that Hall will free Dinah, a black female slave, when she reaches her 23rd birthday in five months (March 10, 1802).
Manumission was the act of freeing a slave by a slave owner, through a deed or will. This act of an individual contrasts with a governmental directive to free slaves, such as the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln in 1863. Manumission in the United States was done for a variety of reasons, ranging from a sentimental gesture to a method of incentivizing obedience at the prospect of eventual freedom. However, the practice became increasingly regulated in order to limit the population of freed black residents in the colonies starting in Virginia in 1691 when a law was passed that required freed slaves to leave the colony within six months and for the previous slave owner to pay for the trip.
A rare uncut edition of Jesuit priest Pierre-Jean De Smet’s Missions de l’Orégon et Voyages dans les Montagnes Rocheuses aux sources de la Columbie, de l’Athabasca et du Sascatshawin, en 1845-1846 (Gand [Ghent]: Vander Schelden, 1848) has been added to the Oregon Collection in Special Collections and University Archives. This collection includes published materials that reflect the history, literature, and life in Oregon and the Oregon Territory. The acquisition of Missions de l’Orégon broadens the De Smet holdings in the Oregon Collection and complements other editions held in the collection including the English-language edition (Oregon Missions) and the Flemish-language edition (Missiën van den Orégon, seen on the right below).
Pierre-Jean De Smet (1801-1873) was born in Belgium and emigrated to the United States in 1821 as a novitiate of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). He moved to a Jesuit mission in Florissant, Missouri, near St. Louis, and began to study the languages and cultures of Native Americans. He went on first his mission among the Salish after they sent a deputation to St. Louis. De Smet returned with the messengers travelling west through Montana and Wyoming, also visiting the neighboring Nez Perce nation on this journey. In 1845-1846, De Smet undertook one of his longest missions throughout the Rocky Mountains and the Oregon Territory, including the Columbia and Willamette valleys, where he established schools and missions throughout. After these travels, De Smet published an account of the evangelizing expedition in Oregon Missions and Travels over the Rocky Mountains in 1845-46 (New York, 1847). The sale of this book, published in three languages, was part of his continued effort to raise money for Jesuit missions in the Northwest. These fundraising labors included many overseas trips to Europe to meet with papal and European state leaders where his translated books might illustrate his mission and impact to European donors. De Smet saw himself as an ally and advocate of the tribes he was in contact with in the West and was aware of the infringements and persecutions of the federal government toward tribal nations writing, “If our Indians become enraged against the whites, it is because the whites have made them suffer for a long time.”
