The Zybach Collection · Jedediah Smith
Places
Public named places only — towns, rivers, museums, forts and roadside markers. No map, no pins, no coordinates.
Every other series in this collection has a map. This one does not, and the absence is deliberate. This series is about a killing, a burial and a search for graves, and a map is the one form in which that material does the harm the Library is trying to avoid. What follows instead is a plain list of the public places the creator names — the towns, the rivers, the forts, the museums and the roadside markers a reader could drive to today.
The finest the Library gets about the events of 1828 is “the mouth of the Smith River, where it enters the Umpqua” — the creator’s own words on his own front page, and the level of detail at which the story has been told in print for two centuries. It publishes nothing finer: no coordinate, no township and section, no road intersection, no aerial frame, no site map, and no photograph captioned as the spot.
- Reedsport, Douglas County
- The town nearest the events of 1828 and the base for the project. The July 2000 newspaper article that began the memorial project ran in The Reedsport Courier. ORWW project index
- The mouth of the Smith River, where it enters the Umpqua
- The general ground of the events of 14 July and 28 October 1828, as the creator’s own index describes it. The Library names the river mouth and nothing finer. ORWW project index
- Bolon Island
- The site on Highway 101 of the state historical marker for Jedediah Smith — the older stone marker and the panel that replaced it. The subject of the committee’s 2023 request to the Oregon Travel Information Council. Historical Markers, Bolon Island
- Fort Umpqua
- The Hudson’s Bay Company post; a stop on the third day of the 2023 Rendezvous, with a tour script from the Elkton Community Education Center. Rendezvous itinerary, day 3
- Fort Vancouver
- Where Arthur Black arrived on 8 August 1828 and where the Rendezvous ended on 5 April 2023. Under construction during Smith’s winter there. Zybach captions, 29 May 2023, no. 1
- Coos History Museum
- Visited on the second day of the Rendezvous for the Youst archive and McLeod’s history. Rendezvous itinerary, day 2
- The Main Rock quarry, Kentuck Creek, near North Bend
- Where the memorial stone was chosen and loaded in June 2023. Photographic Report #2, p. 2
- Champoeg
- Fourth-day stop, and where the offer of the memorial stone was made on 4 April 2023. ORWW project index
- Willamette Falls
- Fourth-day stop; the Museum of the Oregon Territory. Rendezvous itinerary, day 4
- Sunset Bay and Shore Acres
- Camps of 5 and 6 July 1828, and second-day stops in 2023. Guidebook #2, contents
- The Hollering Place
- A local village site on Coos Bay, and a stop on the second day of the Rendezvous. Named as the creator names it; the Library adds nothing about it. Rendezvous itinerary, day 2
- Harris Beach
- A second-day stop in 2023, photographed by Peter Meyerhof; the creator uses it to show what the 1700 Cascadia earthquake left for the party to cross. Zybach captions, 29 May 2023, no. 2
- Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, California
- First-day stop of the Rendezvous. Rendezvous itinerary, day 1
- Wamic, Creswell, Corvallis, Roseburg, Eugene and Cottage Grove
- The Oregon towns where the plaque, the sign artwork, the engraving, the county permissions and the printing were done, as the project’s own sponsor list records them. ORWW sponsors page
The 1828 campsites
The four guidebooks name every camp of the journey and give the 1828 date for each — Hogback Ridge, Gans Prairie, the Winchuck, the Rogue, the Coquille, Sunset Bay, the Hollering Place, Umpqua Bay and the rest. Those names, with their dates and the pages they stand on, are in the chronology and in the guidebooks themselves, printed page by page. They are camps on a route, not sites, and the Library treats them as the creator does.
Whose country this was
The creator’s guidebooks name the peoples whose lands the party crossed, in their own subtitles: Hoopa, Yurok and Tolowa in the first; Tolowa, Tututni, Nasomah, Miluk, Hanis and Quuiich in the second; Chinook, Kalapuyan, Umpqua, Quuiich, Siuslaw and Hanis in the third. His own sketch map, “Oregon Coast Native Lands 1828,” sets out the coastal homelands as he understands them; it is on the maps page.
The people at the mouth of the Umpqua in 1828 are called several things in these documents — Kelawatset, Kellywasats, Quuiich, Lower Umpqua — and the creator’s letter to the Oregon Travel Information Council argues at length about which is right. The Library uses Lower Umpqua (Kelawatset) in its own sentences and leaves every source’s spelling alone. The Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians are the tribal government today.
Provenance
- Built by
- America’s School Trust Library, from the creator’s published files
- Scope
- Public named places only: towns, rivers, forts, museums, quarries and roadside markers
- Not published
- Any coordinate, survey description, road intersection or map that would locate the 1828 attack, the Kelawatset village or the trappers’ graves
- The creator’s pages
- orww.org/1828_Umpqua_Memorial/
