Cayuse people
Traditional Territory
Present-day northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington, including areas along the Snake, Tucannon, Walla Walla, and Touchet rivers in Washington, and along the Umatilla, Grand Ronde, Burnt, Powder, John Day River, and from the Blue Mountains to the Deschutes River in Oregon
Overview
The Cayuse are a Native American tribe in what is now the state of Oregon in the United States. The Cayuse tribe shares a reservation and government in northeastern Oregon with the Umatilla and the Walla Walla tribes as part of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Originally located in present-day northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington, they were skilled horsemen who developed the Cayuse pony.
Historical Notes
Ceded most of their traditional territory to the United States in 1855 by treaty and moved to the Umatilla Reservation, where they have formed a confederated tribe with the Umatilla and Walla Walla tribes
Federal Recognition
The Cayuse people hold federal recognition from the United States government, administered through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Federally recognized tribes have a government-to-government relationship with the United States and are eligible for services and protections under federal Indian law. There are currently 574 federally recognized tribal nations in the United States.
Indigenous peoples had inhabited North America for at least 15,000 years before European contact, developing complex societies across every region of the continent. The Mississippian culture, centered on the city of Cahokia near present-day St. Louis, reached its peak around 1100 AD with a population estimated at 10,000 to 20,000 — larger than contemporary London. The Ancestral Puebloans built multi-story stone complexes at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde between the 9th and 13th centuries. The Iroquois Confederacy, formed between roughly 1450 and 1600, united five nations under a constitution that influenced later American democratic thinking. Across the eastern woodlands, the Great Plains, the Pacific Coast, and the Southwest, hundreds of distinct nations maintained sophisticated trade networks, agricultural systems, and governance structures. European contact beginning in the late 15th century introduced epidemic disease — smallpox, measles, influenza — which devastated Indigenous populations by an estimated 50 to 90 percent within a century.
Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source: Wikipedia.
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