Throughout time, human migration has been happening all over the nation. Especially after the western colonization of America, Indigenous, White, Black, Asian communities have mixed throughout the nation, but some historical events have been especially influential in causing human migration. The meshwork reveals the major human migration patterns in the U.S. and the historic events that have shaped them, as seen through Portland, Oregon in particular.
Scientific evidence demonstrates that the first people came to North America from Asia by way of the Bering Land Bridge some 16,000 to 14,000 B.C.E (Robbins, 2002). When British and American explorers and traders reached the Pacific Northwest in the decades around 1800, Native Americans lived along the shores of the lower Columbia River (Abbott, 1994). By the 16th century, dozens of bands of people lived in present-day Oregon, and before 1750, according to ethnologist Melville Jacobs, the Pacific Northwest was home to approximately 200,000 people, who spoke sixty to seventy languages (Robbins, 2002). However, European explorers started to settle and destroy the environment. Among other influences of colonization, Native Americans in the Northwest coast area faced new diseases that arrived with the Europeans. These infections “killed half in some villages, 90 percent in others, leaving only a few hundred Native Americans” in the Pacific Northwest coast (Abbott, 1994).
The early-mid 1800’s in America brought economic depression, high unemployment, and an epidemic of malaria and yellow fever to the middle and lower classes (NHOTIC). The combination of these disruptive forces acted as the impetus for one of the largest mass migrations of people in American history. In the meantime, America's western border reached only as far as the Mississippi River. The Oregon Trail opened the west coast to European Americans (NPS). From the 1840s through the 1880s, despite the arduous and often deadly journey, 300,000-400,000 people embarked on the Oregon Trail along a 2,170-mile route from Missouri to now-present Portland, Oregon (NHOTIC). At the same time, these explorers were exposed to perilous trails especially along the Columbia River, and some sought alternative routes for future settlers. For instance, Jesse and Lindsay Applegate, and others explored the all-land route into Oregon from Fort Hall, in present-day Idaho, which became known as Applegate Trail. This movement of white Americans resulted in the displacement of Indigenous peoples farther from their ancestral lands and areas. In Oregon, in1856, under the force of the federal troops, Indigenous people, mainly from Umpqua, Molalla, Rogue River, Kalapuya, Chasta tribes, marched 263 miles from a temporary reservation at Table Rock in southern Oregon to the north, where the newly created Grand Ronde Reservation (CTGR).
The Great Migration was another mass movement in the United States during which 5 million southern blacks migrated to the north and west in the early 20th Century. World War I created a huge demand for workers in northern factories and many southern blacks took this opportunity to leave the south. They were motivated by the desire to escape oppressive economic conditions and the social situation in the south as well as the promise of greater prosperity in the north (Chrisetnsen, 2007). Industrious Northern and Western cities provided the prospect of jobs and a better life that was denied to Black communities in the South. In Oregon, as the percentage of white people in Oregon was quite large in its history, the number of African Americans was very small. In 1860, out of over 52,000 state residents, a mere 124 were blacks or mulattoes and they generally worked as menial laborers. However, OSOS reported that “by the early 1900s small numbers of blacks were making inroads as doctors, lawyers, and businessmen. Others, particularly in Portland, opened restaurants, barbershops, and stores serving a growing, and culturally rich, inner-city African American community”.
World War II was one of the biggest and most significant forces of human migration and Abbott (1994) noted that the war brought two sudden changes in the Portland area in terms of Portland’s ethnic group. Firstly, Japanese Americans, descendants of Japanese immigrants to California, Oregon, and Washington since the 1860s have pulled out mandatorily from Portland. Because of their ancestral connection to Japan, American’s adversary in World War II, the U. S. government relocated the city's 2000 Japanese Americans to internment camps with Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. Even as the Japanese population of Portland declined, the wartime shipyard jobs increased the city's African American population from 2,000 to 15,000 (Abbott 1994). This was led by “The Magic Carpet Specials” which was organized by the Kaiser Brothers to import both black and white workers and to aid in the war effort (PBOP). The city of Vanport had been created for the national emergency during World War II and developed as a major shipbuilding hub. Due to the lack of housing Portland area, Henry J. Kaiser, who was a nationally known industrialist at that time, and the federal government started the wartime housing project at Vanport in November 1942. Since then, many thousands of workers came to the Portland area for jobs in the shipyard from all over the country and started to live in the housings at Vanport.
After all, human migration is a big part of the United States all through history. This meshwork disclosed these migration patterns in and out of Portland or Oregon. Especially after European settlers came to the United States, people’s movement occurred because of more artificial forces. Therefore, the migration history revealed the displaced facts, and it enabled us to see how the current mixed demographic was formed.
References
Abbott, Carl, "Settlement Patterns in the Portland Region: A Historical Overview" (1994). Portland Regional Planning History. Paper 10.
Hamberg, Michael James, “Flood of Change: the Vanport Flood and Race Relations in Portland, Oregon” (2017).
Vanport, A Story of Loss – Hidden Hydrology, Accessed October 21, 2020,
(NHOTIC) Nationals Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center. Basic Facts About the Oregon Trail. (n.d), https://www.blm.gov/sites/blm.gov/files/learn_interp_nhotic_historybasics.pdf
(NPS) National Park Service, History & Culture - Oregon National Historic Trail (U.S. National Park Service), July 9, 2020, Accessed November 5, 2020,
https://www.nps.gov/oreg/learn/historyculture/index.htm
(CTGR) Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Trail of Tears, (n.d), Accessed November 5, 2020,
https://www.grandronde.org/history-culture/history/trail-of-tears/
(OSOS) Oregon Secretary of State, State of Oregon: World War I - Striving: Women and Minorities, (n.d), Accessed November 5, 2020,
https://sos.oregon.gov/archives/exhibits/ww1/Pages/before-striving.aspx
(PBOP) Portland Bureau of Planning, The History of Portland’s African American Community (1805 to the present (1993)), Accessed November 5, 2020,
Christensen, S. (2007, December 06) The Great Migration (1915-1960). Accessed November 5, 2020,
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/great-migration-1915-1960/
William G. Robbins, The First Peoples, The Oregon History Project, September 27, 2019, Accessed November 5, 2020,