Americas
![Sarah L. Sanderson - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B0BRQT1QQN.jpg)
The Place We Make: Breaking the Legacy of Legalized Hate
A thoughtful investigation into the incredible true story of a Black man convicted and exiled under the Oregon Exclusion Law in 1851-and a contemporary White woman wrestling with racism and faith after learning she's a descendant of two men who assisted in the exile.
"A beautiful rendering of an ugly history. A worthy read."-Chanté Griffin, advocate, journalist, and author
Moving back to the outskirts of Portland, called the "Whitest city in America," prompted Sarah's curiosity about the colonization of the West, her ancestors, and the legal exile of a Black man. She examined four city leaders involved in Jacob Vanderpool's case-Oregon City's founder, the case judge, Jacob's accuser, and a local pastor-and the cultural and theological fallout of their decisions. Along the way, Sarah took a hard look at her tendencies, unconscious and deliberate, to ignore the possibility of prejudice in her heart.
Vanderpool's case proved a fascinating lens on a far bigger story than one trial, illuminating truths to help us all come to honest terms with our past, learn to repent, and contribute to the good of the people and places around us.
Journey through this sensitive expedition into the events that remain a thorn under America's skin and discover afresh the vast potential of the flawed but endlessly redeemable-human heart.
"A beautiful rendering of an ugly history. A worthy read."-Chanté Griffin, advocate, journalist, and author
Moving back to the outskirts of Portland, called the "Whitest city in America," prompted Sarah's curiosity about the colonization of the West, her ancestors, and the legal exile of a Black man. She examined four city leaders involved in Jacob Vanderpool's case-Oregon City's founder, the case judge, Jacob's accuser, and a local pastor-and the cultural and theological fallout of their decisions. Along the way, Sarah took a hard look at her tendencies, unconscious and deliberate, to ignore the possibility of prejudice in her heart.
Vanderpool's case proved a fascinating lens on a far bigger story than one trial, illuminating truths to help us all come to honest terms with our past, learn to repent, and contribute to the good of the people and places around us.
Journey through this sensitive expedition into the events that remain a thorn under America's skin and discover afresh the vast potential of the flawed but endlessly redeemable-human heart.
Editorial Reviews
"Through her own story, written in beautiful prose, Sarah demonstrates that we do not live in an historical vacuum. On the contrary, the specters of American history will only be laid to rest when we acknowledge their presence in the past and present."-Marlena Graves, author of The Way Up Is Down: Becoming Yourself by Forgetting Yourself
"Sarah has done a beautiful job in weaving painful historical moments and her faith in a way that invites you in and causes you to think."-Robert Monson, enfleshed co-director, writer, and theologian
"Sarah has done a beautiful job in weaving painful historical moments and her faith in a way that invites you in and causes you to think."-Robert Monson, enfleshed co-director, writer, and theologian
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter One
The Founder
In 1829, a red-faced man with a shock of white hair and steel-blue eyes brought his vessel to rest at the base of a waterfall. Raised in Quebec by a Scotch Irish father and a French Canadian mother, the man had trained as a doctor before making his way across the continent as a fur trader. He was six feet, four inches tall and forty-five years old. A biographer would later gush that he was a "superb specimen of man" with "magnificent physical proportions." The Indigenous people called him "White-Headed Eagle." Others knew him as "the Czar of the West," whose "rule was imperial for a thousand miles." By the time of his voyage up the Willamette River that day, he was serving as chief factor of the Columbia region for the Hudson's Bay Company, supervising all British trade from Alaska to California, the Rockies to the Pacific. His name was John McLoughlin.
Did McLoughlin pause, just for a moment, to gaze in awe at the dense crowd of fir, maple, cedar, and oak trees that stood sentinel along the riverbanks? Did he stop to listen to the mighty rhythm pounded out by water jumping ceaselessly over rock? Did he notice the eyes-of elk, or deer, or Clowwewalla Indian-that might have peered out from among the trees, watching him? Or did he turn to his companion, George Simpson, and shout over the noise of the falls that they had reached the farthest inland point in the Willamette Valley accessible by ship? This was it. The end.
As they scrambled up the steep, grassy riverbank to the narrow strip of land running between the river and the nearby basalt cliffs, the men imagined a productive sawmill operating one day through the power of the waterfall. McLoughlin saw the place as a potential connection point between the fertile farmland south of the falls and the waterway north that would lead to trade with the outside world. He had found a site, he thought, "destined by nature to be the most important place in the country." He constructed three buildings there and "claimed land at Willamette Falls for England."
The story of North American land being claimed by the first White man to walk upon it stretches back, of course, to 1492. And that story held (among those who repeated it, anyway) for five hundred years-as late as 1999, John McLoughlin's biographer still conceived of the land McLoughlin found as "deep and rich, waiting for their plows." But the story of land lying in wait for White men's plows is not the first story told about this continent. Our First Nations have long told other stories. For them, the land is not a virgin to be conquered but a mother who freely offers what her children need. For them, the land's story does not begin with the first White footsteps. It stretches back, with the presence of their peoples, to the beginning of time.
"Almost every tribe," wrote Lakota activist and history professor Vine Deloria, Jr., "can point out those features of the landscape which mark the boundaries of their lands and tell how the people first knew that this was their country and that it was in exactly the right place."
The exact right place for the Clowwewalla people was the village they called Charcowah, with its most important feature: the mighty waterfall that provided them with fish. The ancestors of this small band of the Clackamas Tribe had fished and traded here for ten thousand years.
Just fifteen years before McLoughlin's visit, a Canadian explorer named Alexander Henry had passed by the Charcowah village, noting six longhouses and "numerous" Clowwewalla residents. But by the time McLoughlin arrived in 1829, waves of European diseases like smallpox and cholera had reduced the Clowwewalla numbers to a mere twenty-five to thirty inhabitants. Though few, they resisted McLoughlin's incursion by burning his three buildings to the ground.
McLoughlin had an intimate yet authoritarian relationship with the people indigenous to the territory he ruled. He took two Native wives in succession, the mothers of his five children. He believed in treating American Indians fairly and admonished his employees to do the same. Yet he was frustrated that an abundance of salmon and "Nutricious Roots" contributed to what he considered the Indians' "Lasiness," making them unwilling to work for him as often as he wished they would. McLoughlin also exacted swift punishment for perceived wrongs. When a Hudson's Bay employee was killed in an attempted robbery, McLoughlin pursued the Indigenous man alleged to be responsible for the crime and "made the arrangements for the execution in a way best calculated to strike terror to the Indian mind."
When the Clowwewalla burned his three buildings at Willamette Falls, McLoughlin rebuilt.
The Founder
In 1829, a red-faced man with a shock of white hair and steel-blue eyes brought his vessel to rest at the base of a waterfall. Raised in Quebec by a Scotch Irish father and a French Canadian mother, the man had trained as a doctor before making his way across the continent as a fur trader. He was six feet, four inches tall and forty-five years old. A biographer would later gush that he was a "superb specimen of man" with "magnificent physical proportions." The Indigenous people called him "White-Headed Eagle." Others knew him as "the Czar of the West," whose "rule was imperial for a thousand miles." By the time of his voyage up the Willamette River that day, he was serving as chief factor of the Columbia region for the Hudson's Bay Company, supervising all British trade from Alaska to California, the Rockies to the Pacific. His name was John McLoughlin.
Did McLoughlin pause, just for a moment, to gaze in awe at the dense crowd of fir, maple, cedar, and oak trees that stood sentinel along the riverbanks? Did he stop to listen to the mighty rhythm pounded out by water jumping ceaselessly over rock? Did he notice the eyes-of elk, or deer, or Clowwewalla Indian-that might have peered out from among the trees, watching him? Or did he turn to his companion, George Simpson, and shout over the noise of the falls that they had reached the farthest inland point in the Willamette Valley accessible by ship? This was it. The end.
As they scrambled up the steep, grassy riverbank to the narrow strip of land running between the river and the nearby basalt cliffs, the men imagined a productive sawmill operating one day through the power of the waterfall. McLoughlin saw the place as a potential connection point between the fertile farmland south of the falls and the waterway north that would lead to trade with the outside world. He had found a site, he thought, "destined by nature to be the most important place in the country." He constructed three buildings there and "claimed land at Willamette Falls for England."
The story of North American land being claimed by the first White man to walk upon it stretches back, of course, to 1492. And that story held (among those who repeated it, anyway) for five hundred years-as late as 1999, John McLoughlin's biographer still conceived of the land McLoughlin found as "deep and rich, waiting for their plows." But the story of land lying in wait for White men's plows is not the first story told about this continent. Our First Nations have long told other stories. For them, the land is not a virgin to be conquered but a mother who freely offers what her children need. For them, the land's story does not begin with the first White footsteps. It stretches back, with the presence of their peoples, to the beginning of time.
"Almost every tribe," wrote Lakota activist and history professor Vine Deloria, Jr., "can point out those features of the landscape which mark the boundaries of their lands and tell how the people first knew that this was their country and that it was in exactly the right place."
The exact right place for the Clowwewalla people was the village they called Charcowah, with its most important feature: the mighty waterfall that provided them with fish. The ancestors of this small band of the Clackamas Tribe had fished and traded here for ten thousand years.
Just fifteen years before McLoughlin's visit, a Canadian explorer named Alexander Henry had passed by the Charcowah village, noting six longhouses and "numerous" Clowwewalla residents. But by the time McLoughlin arrived in 1829, waves of European diseases like smallpox and cholera had reduced the Clowwewalla numbers to a mere twenty-five to thirty inhabitants. Though few, they resisted McLoughlin's incursion by burning his three buildings to the ground.
McLoughlin had an intimate yet authoritarian relationship with the people indigenous to the territory he ruled. He took two Native wives in succession, the mothers of his five children. He believed in treating American Indians fairly and admonished his employees to do the same. Yet he was frustrated that an abundance of salmon and "Nutricious Roots" contributed to what he considered the Indians' "Lasiness," making them unwilling to work for him as often as he wished they would. McLoughlin also exacted swift punishment for perceived wrongs. When a Hudson's Bay employee was killed in an attempted robbery, McLoughlin pursued the Indigenous man alleged to be responsible for the crime and "made the arrangements for the execution in a way best calculated to strike terror to the Indian mind."
When the Clowwewalla burned his three buildings at Willamette Falls, McLoughlin rebuilt.
