It is estimated that thousands of years ago hundreds of tribes lived in Oregon, thriving off the land and the animals that lived on it. By the beginning of the 1900's the European fur traders and missionaries made their way to Oregon, bringing foreign diseases with them. In the 1850's, thousands of people began to make their way on the Oregon trail, with a fierce disrespect for the land and the animals that the Natives lived off of. Settlers moved more and more Indians off their land, although a stiff resistance was present, many Indians died. This went on until the government established Grand Ronde by treaty in 1854. Although this treaty was established, still the government pushed Indians off their ancestral lands, yet another trail of tears. After many legal battles of loosing land, and their identity as a tribe, in 1983 more than 100 years later, Grand Ronde finally was able to get some (not nearly all) of the land that was unrightfully taken from them.