James D. Saules was one of the earliest Black residents of Oregon’s Willamette (Walamt) Valley and the first to be exiled by the use of racial legislation in the region. Saules arrived in 1841, when the Pacific Northwest was under “Joint Occupation” by the United States and Great Britain.
At the time the region was sparsely populated by immigrants, mostly French-Canadian fur-traders working for or retired from the Hudson’s Bay Company headquartered at Fort Vancouver on the north side of the Columbia River. These men, as well as maritime traders of various outside nations, had already brought enough foreign diseases to drastically reduce the population of Chinook, Kalapuyan, and other indigenous peoples.
Most Americans were Protestant missionaries in small communities along the main rivers, the largest being in the Willamette Valley, just south of the Columbia River. US immigrants outside the missionary system began arriving in larger numbers in the early 1840s, sparking the creation of the Provisional Government. Its main purpose was to formalize settler’s land claims and send representatives back to the US to argue for making the “Oregon Country” an official territory.
After Saules was involved in a dispute with neighboring settlers and a Wasco man named Cockstock, the Provisional Government used the event as a pretext for passing a law excluding Black people from the region. Saules left no records or statements of his own, a common problem historians face when trying to create narratives to explain past events. Author Kenneth Coleman does an excellent job of telling the story of Saules’ life in Oregon with the primary sources available.
In so doing, he demonstrates a rigorous and readable approach to history that confronts the omissions and biases of the sources and provides necessary context that allows the reader to better understand the experiences and actions of individuals from the past that have been underrepresented in historical accounts.
Sources:
Dangerous Subjects- OSU Press
Racial Exclusion in pre-statehood Oregon- Kenneth Coleman