Mark V. Weatherford Papers, 1851-1951

Title: Mark V. Weatherford Papers, 1851-1951

Predominant Dates: 1856

ID: MSS WeatherfordMV

Primary Creator: Weatherford, Mark V. (Mark Vern) (1886-)

Extent: 0.1 cubic feet. More info below.

Languages of Materials: English [eng]

The Mark V. Weatherford Papers consists primarily of reproductions of correspondence and other documents created in 1851-1856 and held by the National Archives (in Record Group 94) that pertain to interactions between Native Americans and the U.S. Army, local militias, and volunteers in the Rogue River Valley region of southern Oregon.  In addition to the reproductions, the collection includes an item-level list that includes the date, correspondents, and a brief description for each document.  The bulk of the documents are from March-July 1856.  In addition to correspondence, the records include maps of terrain and skirmishes.  The earliest document in the collection is a June 1851 petition from citizens of Umpqua County to Major Kearny.

The collection also includes two letters written by Weatherford in December 1951 to Ted Carlson, editor of the Oregon Stater alumni magazine, regarding his recollections of his uncle and law partner, James K. Weatherford, and an article that Mark V. Weatherford had written for the alumni magazine.

Mark V. Weatherford graduated from Oregon Agricultural College in 1907 with a B.S. in Commerce and subsequently earned a law degree from the University of Michigan.  Weatherford was an attorney in Albany, Oregon, beginning in the early 1910s and lived in Albany until his death.

During the 1950s, Weatherford wrote several self-published histories of armed conflicts between the U.S. Army and Native Americans in Oregon, including Rogue River Indian War.  Mark Vern Weatherford was born in Arlington, Oregon on March 5, 1886 and died in Albany, Oregon on 11 September, 1962.

While there had been previous skirmishes between European-American settlers and Native Americans in the Rogue River Valley area, of southern Oregon, the primary conflict known as the Rogue River War of 1855-1856 is described this way by E.A. Shwartz in the Oregon Encyclopedia entry: “The final Rogue River War began early on the morning of October 8, 1855, when self-styled volunteers attacked Native people in the Rogue Valley. It ended in June 1856 with the removal of most of the Natives in southwestern Oregon to the Coast Reservation, which later became the Siletz Reservation. From 235 to 267 Indian people are thought to have been killed in the war, together with fifty soldiers, among them thirty-three volunteers and seventeen regular troops. .”

More Extent Information: 1 box

Statement on Access: Collection is open for research.

Acquisition Note: These materials were received by the former University Archives in the 1960s or early 1970s.  Weatherford's correspondence with Ted Carlson was transferred from the Memorabilia Collection to this collection in 1979.

Related Materials: Several of Weatherford’s self-published histories -- pertaining to the Rogue River conflict, Chief Joseph, and the Bannack-Piute war -- are available in the Special Collections and Archives Research Centers’ History of the Pacific  Northwest book collection.  The Oregon Encyclopedia includes an entry by E.A. Schwartz, the Rogue River War of 1855-1856, and the University of Oregon Special Collections and University Archives’ holdings include the Cayuse, Yakima, and Rogue River Wars Papers, 1847-1858.

Preferred Citation: Mark V. Weatherford Papers (MSS WeatherfordMV), Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Corvallis, Oregon.

Processing Information:

We acknowledge that materials in SCARC collections and the language that describes them may be harmful.  We are actively working to address our descriptive practices; for more information please see our SCARC Anti-Racist Actions Statement online.

This collection contains materials documenting violent attacks by volunteers, militia members, and the U.S. military against Native people in the Rogue Valley.  Providing access to these historical materials does not endorse any attitudes or behavior depicted therein.

We further acknowledge that subject headings from the Library of Congress Subject Headings used in this guide are offensive and outdated.  We have applied these in order to enable standardized searching and access across our collections.

[Date of acknowledgement: July 2021]

Finding Aid Revision History: This finding aid replaces information about the collection that was placed online in 2012.

Weatherford, Mark V. (Mark Vern) (1886-)

Indians of North America--Wars--Oregon--Rogue River Valley (Klamath County-Curry County)
Rogue River Indian War, 1855-1856
Rogue River Tribe
University History
Weatherford, James K., 1850-1935