OREGON TRAIL END: The aftermaths and early state-building in Oregon  

COCKSTOCK AFFAIR : MYTHS OF POWER, MULTICULTURALISM, AND LOGICS OF ANTAGONISM 

        INTENTION: 

• Reimagine the founding of Oregon from a white supremacist utopia, to an intermixing, subversive, un-surveilled landscape with the insurgent possibility for new kinships (rather they are good or bad) 

ACCOUNT I – Anglo American Account 

Reclaimed from the writings of Subagent White and other provisional government leaders, the most detailed account of the Cockstock Affair is known. In 1842 three men of varying statuses, used or misused their position to equip themselves against the follies of prescribed protection. Anderson, Saules, and Cockstock stand as the namesakes of an incident that set forth the racialized surveillance and enforcement of laws to relegate indigenous and black treatments in the fledgling Pacific Northwest. Formerly a hired worker of Winslow Anderson, a mixed race farm owner near Oregon City, Cockstock was a Mollala man who maintained a notable standing in the local Clackamas tribe. James Saules took over the property tha Cockstock used to tend to, and through a matter of Anderson promising the same horse to both Cockstock and Saules, a major conflict ensued.

After being discovered once by Cockstock, Subagent White, a representative of the provisional authority in Oregon, sent a band of armed settlers to take Cockstock, who refused and showed the depth of his party through a rally of forty plus men to respond to the settler’s six. This entire showdown happened as a response to Saules filing a formal complaint for his property, the horse promised by Anderson and taken by Cockstock. With the few settlers retreating, Subagent White notified the provisional government member George LeBreton. The two schemed to escalate the severity of conflict through alerting national attention in Washington D.C. Subagent flogged a native Wasco man for disobeying a compact, understanding that no formal law existed but instead supposedly agreed upon rules of conduct. Cockstock was greatly offended as it was customary for only native people to whip natives and for settlers to whip settlers. The native Wasco man, Skiats had led a raid of a nearby tribe for slaves and had violated the perceptions of the Protest missionaries who had sought an abolitionist Oregon. 

At a 1844 meeting between various tribes from the Klamath of southern Oregon, and the more local Mollalas, Subagent White attempted to establish a civil compact of governance and enforcement of the territory to a group of over five tribes with the intentions to establish rule in the area. Cockstock, who was in attendance, massacred the five tribes' representatives. Shortly after, Saules wrote a letter to Subagent White detailing his dismay with Cockstock: 

• “SIR: I beg leave to inform you that there is an Indian about this place, of the name of “Cockstock,” who is in the habit of making continual threats against the settlers in this neighborhood, and who had also murdered several Indians lately. He has conducted himself lately in so outrageous a manner, that Mr. Winslow Anderson has considered himself in personal danger, and on that account has left his place, and come to reside at the falls of the Wallamette; and were I in circumstances that I could possibly remove from my place, I would certainly remove also, but am so situated that it is not possible for me to do so. I beg, therefore, that you, sir, will take into consideration the propriety of ridding the country of a villain, against the depredations of whom none can be safe, as it is impossible to guard against the lurking attacks of the midnight murderer. I have therefore taken the liberty of informing you that I shall be in expectation of a decided answer from you on or before the 10th of March next; after that date, I shall consider myself justified in acting as I shall see fit, on any repetition of the threats made by the before-mentioned Indian or his party. with respect, James D. Saules.”

• Coleman, Kenneth R, “The Cockstock Affair, the Saules-Pickett Dispute, and the Banishment of Saules” in Dangerous Subjects: James D. Saules and the Rise of Black Exclusion in Oregon. Oregon State University Press, 2017

During a called meeting with the local settlers in March of 1844, the French Canadian citizens overpowered the Anglo-American settlers and sought not to incorporate into the United States with intentions of maintaining a local government. Still unable to locate and subdue Cockstock, Subagent White set forth a $1000 bounty for him, with an emphasis of him being captured alive.  Once Cockstock arrived at the banks of Oregon City, and confronted the townspeople with his band, armed and seeking a conflict. Cockstock fires first and hits the government representative LeBreton, before stabbing him to death with his knife. Anderson, Cockstock’s former employer, hits him over the head, killing him. Of the three men who confronted Cockstock, LeBreton died of blood poisoning, Rodgers died of wounds, and only Willson and Anderson lived to tell the story. 

ACCOUNT II – French Canadian Perspective 

Blanchet, a French Canadian Catholic priest account’s that Cockstock was innocent of the alleged massacre of the representative’s of the five tribes. 

• “John McLoughlin’s store clerk admonished the greedy crowd by shouting, “That Indian is a good man, you should not molest him; if you do, you will repent!”  

• Coleman, Kenneth R, “The Cockstock Affair, the Saules-Pickett Dispute, and the Banishment of Saules” in Dangerous Subjects: James D. Saules and the Rise of Black Exclusion in Oregon. Oregon State University Press, 2017

After arriving to Oregon City, to clear his name, Cockstock was apprehended By a group of settlers who wanted to arrest him for his bounty. A local Settler, John McLoughlin, ordered them not to harass Cockstock. Instead of being taken by a mob of settlers, Cockstock was wrestled to the ground, shot by LeBreton and given the final kill by Anderson. While LeBreton remains an aggressive force in this second account, Rodgers and Willson are regarded as spectators who died with no cause to the event itself. 

ACCOUNT III – Speculative Reality 

The making of the Cockstock Affair and its subsequent legal precedent was largely conjured from the fear-mongering attempts of Subagent White and other Anglo-Americans who wished to rally a majority of the settlers present to make laws that benefited the introduction of the colony to the United States. In following this underlying motive, Subagent White was in correspondence with the Secretary of War, several Congresspeople, and the provisional government leaders. This incident legitimized the once split French Canadian and Anglo American constituencies to form a solidarity in repressing the autonomy of indigenous individuals who had lived at the time, with great agency and movement through their ancestral territory. Within 5 days of the Cockstock Affair, the Oregon Rangers were established as the first legitimate police force, or militia. The tension of Native tribes moving beyond their existing antagonisms to one another to be allied in resisting the expansion of white settlers posed enough of a threat to become the justification for setting forth an enforcement arm of an unsettled state. The correlation between settler colonization, nation-building, land expansion, legitimate use of force, and displacement are clear in understanding that project of the 1840s. The Oregon Donation Land Law came after the failures of war with Native Americans that was in turn replaced by massive national incentives to settle land to rid West and the South of indigenous persons. In the case of both Subagent White’s account and Blanchet’s account, neither of these individuals have confirmed presence during the incident itself. The speculative nature of their truth, which in turn has become history, stem from the political imaginaries of demonizing Black and indigenous people for justified conquest and consolidation of space under the American name; and a more political culture of the existing French Canadian settlers to form a localized, democratic government that sought to self-regulate, a small group of land-working communities. Whether the truth of the affair does recognize an agitating Cockstock, a defenseless and patriotic Saules, and a scheming Subagent White, the aftermath of this Affair laid the groundwork for Black exclusion laws and further dispossession of Native land in the territory.