The Desecration at Yaquina Bay: The Erased History of Oregon’s Coastal Burial Canoes
The Desecration at Yaquina Bay: The Erased History of Oregon’s Coastal Burial Canoes Another archival photograph where we must look past modern development to locate the ancestral tidelands, the sacred village cemetery, and where elevated burial canoes once rested. Like so many who grew up in Oregon, I spent years visiting the historic Newport Bayfront—walking the bayfront strip and taking in the sights—without ever having any idea of the history buried directly beneath it. Going through the historical materials provided for the Run to the Rogue, I was pairing visuals with the text when a single sentence from the Siletz Tribal Language Project suddenly made the devastating reality clear: " The main village (of many) was at—what is now—the Bayfront in Newport. A military man stationed at Yaquina Bay in 1856, wrote, the 'Yaquina Indians do not hesitate to go out into the open ocean to hunt whales'. The army blockhouse on Yaquina Bay was built on the main cemetery; the bur...
