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Wedding Bands And Marriage Bans: A History Of Oregon's Racial Intermarriage Statutes And The Impact On Indian Interracial Nuptials, Matthew Aeldun Charles Smith

Dissertations and Theses

Beginning in the late eighteenth century, the first contacts between white and Indian cultures in Oregon quickly secured marriages between the European and American traders and trappers and indigenous women. These unions sustained economic alliances and nurtured cultural links.

But the opening of the Oregon Trail brought an influx of white men and women from America's Middle West who stored more than supplies in their wagons. They transported racial beliefs which subjugated all non-whites to an inferior status. Laws were passed by this generation of pioneers in each governmental period -- provisional, territorial and statehood -- which codified a wide …