ADDRESS DELIVERED AT DEDICATION OF
GRAND RONDE MILITARY BLOCK
HOUSE AT DAYTON CITY PARK,
OREGON, AUG. 23, 1912
v M. C. GEORGE
Grand Army Veterans and Pioneers and Fellow Citizens:
This is an age of railroads, telegraphs, telephones, wireless messages, sky scrapers and airships, in short, progress and advancement o'er land and sea and under and over it all. Yet, within our recollection, this was an uncivilized Indian country, and exposed pioneers were working day and night to insure and upbuild American civilization. In the winter of '55 and '56 the settlers of this valley, apprehensive of the spread of the Yakima outbreak among the Indians that were gathered at the Grand Ronde Reserve, assisted probably by Lieut. Hazen's soldiers, began the building on the hill on the rim of that Reserve this old Block House as a Fort, and surrounded it with a stout stockade for refuge and defense. Afterwards it was moved to the Agency about three miles distant on the Reserve, and used as a jail for unruly Indians. Today, on its removal to this beautiful park, through the efforts of your public-spirited citizens, and the consent of our Government, with the aid of our Representatives, you have assembled to dedicate it as a momument in the memory of Gen. Joel Palmer, the founder of Dayton, and the donor of this ground, and as a museum of Indian and Pioneer relics.
Gen. Palmer was our first Supt. of Indian affairs, and he it was that assembled the various tribes of Indians on the Re- serve, and largely through his influence this old Block House was erected, afterwards known as Fort Yamhill. Gen. Palmer, fearing trouble, deemed it necessary for a force of U. S. troops to be there stationed to maintain order and insure safety. Gen. Phil. Sheridan in his Memoirs says that Gen. Wool assigned him from Fort Vancouver to the Grand Ronde early in '56 and that sometime prior to his arrival at Grand Ronde the
