Taking steps to remember
New Year’s Peace Hike offers a pathway to healing
By Eliot Sekuler
For the TODAY
The trail’s beauty belies the grim story of its namesake. The pine needle carpet is soft on a winter’s day and switchbacks offer panoramas of dense Sitka forest, the majestic Cape Perpetua and the jagged contours of the Oregon Coast. Signs identify the narrow path as the Amanda Trail, a name commemorating the cruel ordeal of a blind Coos Indian woman who was brutally torn from her home near Coos Bay in 1864. She was forced to trudge at gunpoint with other captives, barefoot, along a grueling mountain and coastline route to an area designated as the Alsea Sub-Agency in what is now the city of Yachats.
An annual New Year’s Peace Hike, sponsored by the volunteer group Yachats Trail Committee, commemorates the ordeal of Amanda de Cuys and the experiences of countless other tribal people who suffered similar treatment at the hands of the US government and its genocidal policies.
The free, public events begin at 9:30 am Sunday, Jan. 1, with a community drum circle at the pavilion behind the Yachats Commons. At 10 am, a fire will be lit and Native American storytellers will recount Amanda’s tale. At 10:30 am, hikers will set out on a variety of possible routes with some choosing a quarter-mile walk and others electing to take the full Amanda Trail hike, 2.2 miles in each direction.
“It’s a great way to start the new year with positive energy,” said Donald “Doc” Slyter, chief and elder of the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians. “Most of the people in Yachats are aware of what’s going on in the world and what went on here before. They’re trying to make things better.”
Both the establishment of the Amanda Trail, inaugurated in 2009, and the hike, first held in 2012, are parts of the Yachats community’s efforts to come to terms with a history notable for the atrocities committed there against the native American population.
The Alsea Sub-Agency was founded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1859 and members of the Coos, Coquilles, Lower Umpqua, Alsea and Siuslaw tribes were herded to the area in forced “trails of tears” marches that resulted in many deaths and terrible suffering.
“It became an internment camp where over 50 percent of the people perished,” Chief Slyter said.
In 1863, the population was listed at 521. Ten years later, even after additional people were forced within its boundaries, that number had dwindled to 343. Deprived of their ability to hunt and gather, the internees were coerced into farming on infertile land. Many died from starvation and disease.
The Alsea sub-agency was eliminated in 1875 and the city of Oceanview was created by white settlers on the site. By 1905, tourists began to discover the area’s natural beauty. In 1917, the city re-christened itself as Yachats, a derivation of the native American name. As the town grew, the history of the atrocities committed there was deliberately erased. The prior existence of the Alsea sub-agency was commemorated only by a sign in the local cemetery that described the internment camp in glowing terms as an idyllic native American settlement.
The true story of Amanda was recounted by historian Stephen Dow Beckham in his 1977 book, “The Indians of Western Oregon: This Land Was Theirs.” Beckham, a Lewis and Clark University professor, had discovered the story in the diary of an American soldier who had taken part in the forced march, and that journal had been collected by the Smithsonian Institution. Yachats resident Joanne Kittel read Beckham’s book and was moved to take action. In an effort to correct the historical record of her city and working under the supervision of the Confederated Tribes, she and a friend, Suzanne Curtis, authored the booklet, “The Yachats Indians, Origins of the Yachats Name and the Prison Camp Years.”
“When the article came out, the majority of people in the community greeted it favorably,” Kittel said. “They hadn’t had that information before and most of them appreciated getting it, although there was a loud minority that said it wasn’t true. But thanks to the Lincoln County Historical Society, that sign in the cemetery was changed in 2010 to reflect the historical truth.”
Kittel proudly noted that there are now 11 signs in the Yachats area that reflect the truthful facts about the area's history and crimes committed there against tribal peoples.
She set out to create a trail that would serve as a living memorial to that history, one that would honor the suffering of Amanda and the many people who died on their journey to Yachats or while being interned there. In 1987, she and her husband donated two acres for a section of the trail, which now runs along lands owned by the federal government, by the Oregon Department of Transportation and Oregon State Parks. The Yachats Trails Committee was formed and the 25-year effort to create Amanda’s Trail gathered momentum.
Among the early volunteers was Lauralee Svendsgaard, who became the Yachats Trail chairperson and also conceived of an event that would become the annual Peace Hike. As she explained in her proposal,
“Having the peace hike at the beginning of the new year commemorates the tragic experience that Amanda has come to symbolize, while making a solemn commitment by each of us to find that place of peace within us; to vow to let that power direct our actions in the new year when we engage others; to courageously speak out against injustice, bigotry and callous perspectives on those who suffer; to treat people of all cultures with honor, dignity and respect.”
Chief Slyter spoke of the reversal in the attitude of the people of Yachats toward their history. “It’s a big change,” he said. “Before all this happened, tribal people wouldn’t go to Yachats because there was such a bad energy there. The community completely turned it around.”
Yachats Commons is located at Highway 101 between 4th and Pontiac Streets. For a complete schedule, a map and more information about this year’s Yachats New Year’s Peace Hike, go to yachatstrails.org\peacehike or call 541-961-8374.