RobertTBoyd.com

January 2026: Four essays on Portland Basin indigenous history, for OHS’s projected website on Portland History

admin — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 05:26:01 +0000

submitted to the Oregon Historical Society. They are: “Before Portland: an introduction to the Indigenous People of the Portland Basin,” “Epidemics among Portland Basin Native Peoples, 1781 to 1834,” “A Timeline for the Indigenous Peoples of the Portland Basin, 1446-1856,” … Read More

December 2025, two “disease and demography” chapters for the Kalapuyans of the Willamette Valley book

admin — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 05:18:58 +0000

submitted to Oregon State University Press for review. The chapters are “Kalapuyan Disease and Demography to 1848″ (33 pp) and “Apocalypse to Reconfiguration: Kalapuyan Population Trends, 1849-1889″ (with David Lewis), 26 pp. Volume one of Kalapuyans of the Willamette Valley (David Lewis, … Read More

“Fire and Water: Kalapuyan Land and its transformation: an environmental history of the Willamette Valley, 1812-1845″

admin — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 05:09:35 +0000

188 page draft manuscript completed January 2025. My goals in writing this manuscript were two: first, to gain control of all the data for an assigned chapter on Kalapuyan fire use for the in-process book Kalapuyans of the Willamette Valley (Lewis, Connolly, and Zenk eds); and second, to summarize all known data, historic and ethnographic, on fire use by Kalapuyans, in particular everything relevant from the various journals of the 1841 U.S. Exploring (“Wilkes”) Expedition. Compiling all the Wilkes data in a single place had been an item on my “bucket list,” to do after Before Portland was completed, but the assignment of the chapter for the Kalapuyans volume prompted me to do most of that work first. And in pulling it all together, I realized that I needed to consider “water” (wetlands, waterways, precipitation, etc.) as well in my season-to-season coverage, hence the title “Fire and Water.” As of early 2026, the long manuscript is all but complete, though the short version for the Kalapuyans volume is only in draft form. The environmental volume of Kalapuyans will probably come together in late 2026-2027, and at that time the disposition of both the long and short versions of “Fire and Water” should become clearer than it is now.

December 2021, updated edition of Indians, Fire, and the Land in the Pacific Northwest

admin — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 04:48:50 +0000

is published by Oregon State University Press. Other than a few corrections, the text of all contributions remains the same as in the first, 1999 edition. The updated edition includes a new 10 page foreword by fire ecologist and Karuk tribal member Frank Kanawha Lake; and a 15 page “Epilogue: Twenty-Two Years Later,” by myself, summarizing critical research on Pacific Northwest anthropogenic fire between 1999 and 2020.

Op Ed: “The first epidemics: How disease ravaged Indigenous Northwest Peoples”

admin — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 04:43:29 +0000

is published in the Seattle Times, December 10, 2021. intended to place the covid epidemic in the historical context of “new”/introduced diseases in Pacific Northwest history

June 2021

admin — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 04:39:07 +0000

The paperback reprint of The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence… is published by the University of Washington Press.

admin — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 04:31:14 +0000

2018-2021 Eight) articles were published in the online Oregon Encyclopedia:

Indian Use of Fire in Oregon, Native Art of the Wapato Valley, Wapato (Wappato) Valley Indians, Disease Epidemics among Indians, 1770s-1850s, Wascopam Mission, and Multnomah (Sauvie Island Indian Village) (Hajda, Zenk, and Boyd), Portland Basin Chinookan Villages in the early 1800s (Boyd and Zenk), and Western Oregon Klikatats (Klickitats) (Boyd, Byram, and Lewis)

New documentary source for the introduction of smallpox in the late 1700s

admin — Sun, 05 Dec 2021 13:24:14 +0000

My first update concerns the late 1700s smallpox epidemic (chapter two), and a new discovery of my own that gives added weight to the hypothesis that smallpox first entered the region via a coastal contact. The source is an important one, and if I’d had the opportunity to revise, I’d have added it to chapter two and revised my discussion of the possible alternate routes of entry accordingly.
The new source is:
Minto, John
1915 “A Tale of the Oregon Coast.” pp. 56-80 in Rhymes of Early Life in Oregon and Historical and Biographical Facts. Salem: Statesman Publishing Company.
The book is held by 34 libraries (according to Worldcat), most in the Northwest, and accessible online. It was published the year of author John Minto’s death, and includes several poems and short papers, as well as three reprints, on Minto Pass and Oregon Indian population, and “A Tale of the Oregon Coast.” The first two reprints had been published in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, and I’d seen them; the third is a reprint from volume 8 (1903) of the “Oregon Teachers Monthly,” which I hadn’t. The manuscript of “A Tale…” is in the John Minto Papers at the Oregon Historical Society Library, and a copy of volume 8 of the Oregon Teachers Monthly is accessible online from Google Books. (A complete run of Oregon Teachers Monthly is held by the Multnomah County Library).
John Minto (1822-1915) was born in England and came to Oregon in 1844. He was a four-time member of the Oregon House of Representatives, and was a founder of both the Oregon State Agricultural Society and Oregon Pioneers Association. Early Oregon historian Horace Lyman prefaced “A Tale of the Oregon Coast” as follows: “I am glad to assure the readers of the Oregon Teachers Monthly that this is a perfectly accurate reproduction of the story as told to Mr. Minto more than fifty years ago” and “Simple acquaintance with Mr. Minto is sufficient guarantee of his fidelity to what he understands as fact.” My reading of Minto’s other papers seem to underline this endorsement, so Minto the writer seems to be a reliable source.
How about his informants? The tale was related to Minto in 1845 by “Edwin,” son of Clatsop Indian Cullaby, on the day after Cullaby himself had related it to his son, probably in Clatsop (though this is not stated), possibly in Chinuk Wawa (unlikely considering the detail). Cullaby himself claimed to be the grandson of the shipwrecked sailor who figures prominently in the first part of the narrative, and who married Culllaby’s Nehalem Tillamook grandmother. Cullaby first heard the story as a boy. The form of the tale, chronological and episodic, seems to fit the pattern of lower Columbia oral literature. Though (as related in 1845) it referred to events some sixty to seventy years earlier, and may have accumulated some embellishments while being retold during that time, Northwest Coast oral literatures are notable for preserving important historical facts and events, so the core details are probably correct.
The first part of “Cullaby’s Tale” concerns a shipwreck, from internal evidence probably in the early 1770s, at Nehalem, and the rescue of the shipwrecked white man who married Cullaby’s grandmother. Various episodes centered on the couple follow, and then about 2/3 through the entire story, under the heading “The Spotted Death,” is the following passage:
“…more than ten years before the Boston men brought the big ship into the great river [American Robert Gray, in 1792], a ship very much like this one came close to the shore near the Nehalem, and some of its people made a landing in small boats. When they went away, they left two sick men who afterwards died. Soon many of the Tillamook became sick in the same way. The disease caused their skins to turn very red and their faces to swell, making them almost blind. Many, many of them died, and the faces of those who survived were left spotted ever afterwards. The deadly sickness soon reached the Clatsops from the Tillamook people….The old chief soon died, and his son….died too, as did a younger half-brother….[the white man] advised those who were not yet sick to go to the highlands in small parties; many did so and some were saved from death by heeding his advice. So very many of the people died that the death wail for them was about the only sounds that could be heard for many days…after the plague was over…some of the people returned to Quatat [Seaside]….but the place never contained as many inhabitants as it had before. The spotted death, as it was called, had left its withering blight upon a once peaceful and happy people.”
The crucial elements are, of course, “spotted death”–a rapidly spreading disease that killed many people and left survivors with pock marks–clearly smallpox; and a date “more than ten years before” the first entry of the “Boston” (white) men to the Columbia, which would be American Robert Gray in 1792. Because of the “more than” preceding the “ten years,” I’ve assigned the tentative date of 1781 to the event. 1781, though it varies from my estimate in “Pestilence” of 1775, averaged from several estimated dates, agrees with the dates arrived at independently (and without this source) by Cole Harris (“Voices of Disaster: Smallpox around the Strait of Georgia in 1782,” Ethnohistory 41(4): 591-626), in 1994, and Elizabeth Fenn (Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82. New York: Hill and Wang) in 2001. On origins, Harris and I agree on a coastal contact (probably from a Spanish ship from Alta California), while Fenn argues for spread from the Plains over the Rocky Mountains via intertribal contacts. Writing in 2021, and given the nature of smallpox epidemics and particular history of the 1775-82 pandemic, I believe that we’re all right and it is most likely that smallpox entered the Pacific Northwest from more than one direction at or about the same time. That is the most probable explanation, I believe, though we may never know for sure.

Updating “Pestilence”

admin — Sun, 05 Dec 2021 13:17:52 +0000

When UW Press announced to me back in September 2020 that they wanted to reissue “The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence” in paper, they didn’t allow me to revise and update (probably wise, since it would take a while to accomplish). So we settled on an interim solution: that the Press would insert a line directing readers to my website for more information and summaries of new research.
So I’m going to start a series of updates, on several topics of import to the contents of the book. In the twenty-two years(!) since 1999, when “The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence” was first published, there has been considerable movement on the broad topic of “disease and demography in the Americas” (to borrow the title of the 1992 book), but less on the Pacific Northwest per se. In my series of updates I want to concentrate on the narrow regional focus, and direct readers to relevant works published since the year 2000.

update, February 28 2021

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 02:56:36 +0000

After a long hiatus, I’m back on my website with great news! Both The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence and Indians, Fire and the Land in the Pacific Northwest are scheduled for republication during 2021.

The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence will be a paper reprint, at a much more affordable price. It is scheduled to be out today, and copies should be available for purchase shortly.

Indians, Fire and the Land will be reissued, sometime during the Fall, with a new Preface and Epilogue reviewing new literature published since 1999.

More information on both will follow in later updates. Stay tuned!