Harney County, Oregon: History
The Native Americans living in this region at the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition were the Northern Paiute, who fought with the Tenino and Wasco peoples. Peter Skene Ogden was the first known European to explore this area in 1826 when he led a fur brigade for the Hudson's Bay Company.
In September 3, 1855 Brigadier General Harney led the U.S. Army and surrounded and ambushed a Lakota village killing 86 people and taking many others as prisoners. This site, located in Nebraska, is now known as the Blue Water Massacre or the Battle of Ash Hollow.
Harney County was carved out of the southern two-thirds of Grant County on February 25, 1889. A fierce political battle, with armed "night riders" who spirited county records from Harney to Burns, ended with Burns as the county seat in 1890.
The Malheur River Indian Reservation was created by executive order on March 14, 1871, and the Northern Paiute within the Oregon state boundaries were settled there. The federal government "discontinued" the reservation after the Bannock War of 1878. Descendants of these people form a federally recognized tribal entity, the Burns Paiute Tribe, which had 341 members in 2008. Fewer than 35.5% of the tribal members live on the Burns Paiute Indian Colony near Burns. The tribe formerly earned revenue from a small casino, the Old Camp Casino, before its closure in 2012, and renting out communal tribal lands for grazing rights to local ranchers.
The first white people to arrive through Harney County were French explorers, circa 1750ː Narceese Charbonneau (father of Toussaint Charbonneau), LaValle and a priest named Joseph Nadeau. The men came aboard a Spanish supply ship and left from San Diego on a transcontinental tour to Quebec. Instead of reaching Canada, the men arrived at southern Harney County and continued towards Idaho. In the late 1820s, Peter Skene Ogden made a description of the natural features and Indian culture from Klamath County to Harney County, following the Sylvaille River, and turning up afterwards towards Walla Walla leading a fur brigade for Hudson's Bay Company.
On January 2, 2016, the headquarters building of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was seized by armed protesters related to the Bundy standoff. The group protested the prison sentences of two ranchers convicted of arson in wildfires set in 2001 and 2006, which the ranchers claimed spread from their land into the wildlife reserve. Militia leaders, including Ammon Bundy and Jon Ritzheimer, were arrested on January 26, 2016, in an event that included the shooting death of militant LaVoy Finicum by law enforcement at a highway blockade between Burns and John Day. The following day, only four militants remained, and they surrendered on February 11, 2016.