The Indians are Quiet: White Supremacy in the First Photographs of Native Peoples in Oregon

Abstract

Abstract:Can White violence toward Indigenous peoples be perpetuated in a photograph? Between 1857 and 1861, U.S. Army officer Lorenzo Lorain photographed the people and landscapes of Fort Umpqua, an isolated military outpost on the southern Oregon coast. Stationed there to enforce the removal of regional Indians to the nearby Umpqua Reserve, Lorain's salt prints, now held by the Oregon Historical Society's research library, include thirteen portraits of Coos, Lower Umpqua, Siuslaw, Klamath, and Modoc men and women. Today, these are the earliest known photographs of Oregon's Indians. They are also the earliest photographs documenting the Army's role in the genocide and erasure of Native peoples' lifeways and communities in Oregon during the mid-nineteenth century. Viewed through Lorain's personal letters and military records, we come to understand how the photographer's beliefs in colonialism and White supremacy contributed to erasing the identities and histories of the people in his images.