Presenter: Catherine Jaffe
Faculty Mentor: Kevin Hatfield, Jennifer O’Neal
Presentation Type: Oral
Primary Research Area: Social Science
Major: Biology, Environmental Science
Lasting from 1855 until 1868, the “Snake” War was a devastating conflict during which many individuals from the Northern Paiute tribe were taken captive and inducted into an inter-tribal slave trade. In 1871, the U.S. government commissioned Dr. William McKay, a leader of the violent “Snake” war expeditions, to locate and liberate these displaced Paiutes. The fundamentally dehumanizing effects of enslavement and captivity have led to the near erasure of these captured Paiutes and their experiences from historical narratives. As a result, the events of McKay’s expedition and the fates of Northern Paiutes captured and enslaved in the war have been largely un-researched. Given the scarcity of secondary literature on this topic I draw on extensive primary sources from the McKay Papers: a collection of letters and government documents relating to Dr. William McKay housed in the University of Oregon microfilm collection. Using the unusual 1871 expedition as a case study, I argue that the effects of slavery, captivity, acculturation, and oppression were still vividly present during this “liberation expedition” and strongly informed the objectives of William McKay and the U.S. federal government. I further argue that primary documentation of this expedition reveals that government policies served to reinforce pre-existing perceptions of the Northern Paiute as less-than human and so undermined the sovereignty of these independent and complex peoples. Unearthing hidden histories like that of the 1871 expedition can help build a new understanding of these historical narratives that takes into account the sovereignty of the Northern Paiute people. The combined repercussions of intertribal slavery and government driven acculturation still linger with the Northern Paiute people, yet most significant is the fact that these peoples have survived such oppressive forces to continue their culture today.