The Road Not Dare Traveled by Shannera

Throughout history, heroes have often those who stood alone, choosing to take the road less traveled. They were brave enough, or believed so strongly in something, that they decided to stand apart from the crowd in order to represent a less then popular ideal, often for the simple reason that it was the right thing to do.

A century before an Alabama seamstress named Rosa Parks "took a stand", in 1955, by sitting down a bus reserved for whites, a Rogue Valley pioneer named John Beeson put his life and home on the line to protest the way that Native Americans were being mistreated by the white settlers in southern Oregon and around the country. (Hamilton)John Beeson, often referred to as the "First human rights activist", was a tireless advocate for Native Americans. He risked his life to fight for equal rights for southern Oregon's earliest residents, the Indians, and to expose the unfair treatment and abuse by settlers who moved in almost over night and began taking over the land and natural resources.

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(Hamilton)Eventually, the white settlers began waging war against the native people for no other reason than to kill and Indian for "sport" or to protest false information spread by corrupt settlers or Indian agents, who were supposed to protect whites and the Indians but wanted the Indians to leave the Rogue Valley. (Hannon)While many settlers felt that the Indians were savage animals, and less than human then the whites, Beeson sympathized because he felt the native people were the first people to inhabit southern Oregon. He understood that the Indians had lived in the Rogue Valley for hundreds of years before white man came by wagon train, in the 1800's, and began snatching up land, using up resources and endangering the lives of the native people...