THE QUARTERLY

of the

Oregon Historical Society

VOLUME XXII MARCH, 1921 NUMBER 1

Copyright, 19.21, by the Oregon Historical Society The Quarter!/ ditarowi responsibility for the positions taken by contributor* to its pages

A SKETCH OF THE ROGUE RIVER VALLEY AND SOUTHERN OREGON HISTORY*

By ALICE APPLEGATK SABGENT

PART I.

Lying between the Cascade mountains on the east, and the Coast range on the west, and tempered by the warm oceanic current from Japan, the Rogue River Valley has a climate unsurpassed except perhaps by the coast valleys of Greece.

THE ROOUE INDIANS

About the year 1834 we find the Rogue River Valley a wilderness inhabited by a tribe of Indians. These Indians were a branch of the tribe living in northern California whom we now know as the Shastas. But the original name was not Shasta but Chesta. They were the Chesta Scotons and the Indians living in the Rogue River valley were Chesta Scotons.

The first white men to set foot in the valley of whom we have any authentic record, were some French Canadian trap- pers who were trapping for furs for that great British monopoly the Hudson's Bay Company. These men made their way into the valley and set their traps along the river, but the Indians

Read before the Greater Medford Club in the Spring of 1915.