Book Review: Chaining Oregon by Kay Atwood
Chaining Oregon: Surveying the Public Lands of the Pacific Northwest, 1851-1855 was written by Kay Atwood and published by the Mcdonald & Woodward Publishing Company in Blacksburg, Virginia. The cover art consists of a General Land Office map drawn by William Ives in 1851, consisting of the Willamette River and surrounding areas. Within the text there were various other maps, drawings and photos of the land that was surveyed during these years. Kay Atwood was a historian based in Ashland known for her vivid writing style and thorough research. In this book, Atwood described in great detail the journeys of several land surveyors that mapped the Oregon Territory between 1851 and 1855, including the physical hardships of the job, the politics of land management in new territories, and the effects that their work has had on today’s Oregon. Kay Atwood’s goal of this book was to answer her own question: “by whom surveyed”?
In the preface of Chaining Oregon, Atwood included these thoughts: “As my interest in Pacific Northwest history deepened, my curiosity about these men grew. Who were they and how did they contribute toward settlement? I began my research ten years ago between my professional obligations and sometimes instead of them, the story of the surveyors took shape”(pg. xi). The original idea behind the book was born out of Atwood’s desire to learn more about the Pacific Northwest, who specifically surveyed it, and how that has affected today’s Oregon. Atwood saw the importance of unearthing the histories of the men who essentially legitimized the Oregon Territory in the eyes of the U.S. government.
Atwood showed the effects of their surveying by including information about how the settlers and native populations of the areas were affected by American surveying. Atwood writes: “At the same time that they enhanced Euro-American settlement west of the Cascades, the surveyors helped destroy ancient traditions on lands long held sacred by native peoples”. Here Atwood describes the double edged sword of land surveying, and how it legitimized white settlers concepts of land ownership, while aiding in the dispossession of Native Americans.
Atwood also thought it was important to include the political aspect of these projects. Throughout the book, the author references the influence that political affiliation and family ties had on who controlled the surveys and who was dealt out contracts. Often, the Surveyor General was accused in local newspapers of injustice: “...I am informed that Mr. Preston, knowing that he will be speedily removed, has let to his favorites contracts to survey all the best portions of the country.”
Kay Atwood set out to give a detailed history of the lives of the men who did this work, and in doing so shed light on the political, social and geographical implications it had on everyone in that time and leading into the future. Along with trying to humanize these surveyors, she also tried to accurately describe all sides of the story. While Atwood described the accusations and political skirmishes that occurred in the book, there was no telling whose side the author would be on. The book overall was a narrative not to teach a lesson, but to purely uncover a whole spectrum of outcomes from the work of these surveyors.
Above all, Kay Atwood set out to answer her own question. Through her own curiosity and desire to shed light on this obscure bit of history, she stumbled upon the extraordinary lives that surveyors led in the Oregon Territory, along with their integral part of forming the Pacific Northwest of today. This book reads as a very detailed, unbiased and thorough account of the development of the western United States, accounting the good as well as the bad. With these men who laid down the foundations of Oregon as the focus, Atwood painted a picture of the 1850’s as a time of political, social and environmental transformation.