The War on Illahee: Genocide, Complicity, and Cover-Ups in the Pioneer Northwest

How a generation of pioneers and their historians knowingly hid the violent history of Indigenous dispossession in the Pacific Northwest

The small, mostly forgotten wars of the 1850s in the American Pacific Northwest were part of a broader genocidal war—the War on Illahee—to seize Native land for Euro‑Americans. Illahee (a term for “homeland” in Chinook) was turned into the states of Oregon and Washington through the violence of invading soldiers, settlers, and serial killers. Clashes over...