The 'Contraband' Migration to Walla Walla
Newly freed enslaved people from the South arrive in the territory, facing economic exploitation and virulent local racism.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Quite a number of colored individuals—formerly slaves—have found their way across the plains this season. Numbers of them have arrived in this valley every week during the past month. We saw one on the street the other day whom a gentleman recognized as formerly a slave in Mississippi. A woman, in somewhat destitute circumstances, was applied to by a gentleman and offered forty dollars per month to do housework in his family; she replied that she did not come to this country to work for a pittance. An old gentleman, with two grown-up daughters and a son, and the possessor of a wagon, four oxen and two horses, was offered a situation upon a farm near town for himself and family at a salary of $40 per month and board each, when he replied that they didn't come to this country to make slaves of ourselves, and that he could make fairer than that trading round. At last accounts the old fellow had sold his horses to procure money to buy provisions, and was preparing to take up a line of march for the big Willamette, where he said he had heard that the colored people are equal to the whites. We make these items to show what kind of a colored population is coming into our country, and what may be expected in future, provided the abolition policy of the party in power is continued. Although the constitution of Oregon prohibits the immigration of colored people into that State, we presume the 'webfooters' will receive them with open arms, and teach them how to starve.
“They didn't come to this country to make slaves of ourselves.”
This account captures the immediate human movement of the Reconstruction era, revealing how freedom-seeking Black families were met with hostility and wage-slavery tactics in the Pacific Northwest. It highlights the stark tension between the promise of Western opportunity and the entrenched racial exclusion that shaped Oregon and Washington territories.
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