Settlement, Worship, and Removal: The Meek Family Burying Ground
Near Dundee, Oregon
The Oregon Trail brought waves of settlers westward in the eighteen forties, and many staked donation land claims across the Tualatin Valley west of the Willamette River. Among them was Joseph Meek, a famous mountain man turned Oregon pioneer who helped push for American territorial governance. Meek had married a Nimiipuu woman, one of the Nez Perce people, and their children were buried here in a small pioneer cemetery beside a Methodist meeting house.
The intersection of cultures at this ground runs deep. The Atfalati, or Tualatin, people of the Kalapuya had long lived in this valley. The Methodist mission movement arrived in the eighteen thirties hoping to convert Native peoples, and the meeting house here served the incoming settler population. The children buried in this ground were of both worlds.
The marker's title, Settlement, Worship, Removal, names the sequence plainly. Native peoples were displaced as settler communities consolidated their claims. The small burying ground that remains is one of the quieter monuments to the layered history beneath the Tualatin Valley's surface.
