The Takelma

The Takelma. . The world of the Takelma people could be viewed from Titanakh, Table Rocks. Of the two major groups of the Takelma, the Dagelma resided west from here, while the Latgawa extended to the east. These people gathered grass seed, acorns and camas; hunted elk and deer; and fished for salmon and trout. They traded and married with other tribal families living nearby. , “People shall spear salmon, they will go to get food, to one another will they go to get food; one another they will feed, and they shall not kill one another. In that way shall the world be, as long as the world goes on.” Coyote (From a Takelma Legend), In 1827 a Hudson’s Bay Company party led by Peter Skene Ogden entered the Rogue Valley. Within a generation, settlers and miners occupied the valleys, clearing and plowing up the land. And miners dug up the streambanks for gold. The Takelma fought fiercely for their homeland, engaging in both diplomacy and warfare to save their way of life. It was from Table Rocks that Takelama people watched their ancestral world fall apart. The U.S. Army was called in and defeated the native peoples in 1856, and survivors were removed to the Grande Ronde and Siletz reservations in northwestern Oregon. , “If we could be even on the borders of our native land, where we could sometimes see it, we would be satisfied.” Cholcultah, Takelma headman , Today, descendants of these people still keep a watchful eye on their homeland in the shadow of Titanakh.