There are many famous or should I say infamous people, aside from Pete French, who made a significant difference in the area of Steens Mountain. The people and families who settled here made contribution to the area that had both
 positive and negative effects.  Settlers first moved into the area in roughly 1862. This was many years past the time that settlers had made their westward movement along the Oregon Trail.

Settlers brought horses back, which have long been extinct from this area. They also brought diseases such as smallpox and cholera.  The diseases swept through the tribes and wiped out many Indians, both young and elderly tribal members.  Cattlemen quickly took up land and homesteads to run their huge herds of livestock over the land.  Due to the increase in grazing livestock, expanding foreign population, and hunting and fishing by these settlers the resources of the Paiute were greatly endanger if not destroyed.

Here is a very short list of settlers and a brief description of their effects on the Steens Mountain area.  The list is ot those who took part in changing the land and culture for the Paiute as well as future settlers:

             Bill Brown was a great contributor to bring horses back to the area.  Bill raised and sold horses by the thousands.  Said to be a very eccentric fella', but also generous and naive.  E.R. Jackman and John Scharff, who co-wrote the book Steens Mountain in Oregon's High Desert County,  describe him well by saying, "He made a million dollars several times because he was farseeing, but he always lost it by not being nearsighted."  Many of his fellow cattlemen took advantage of him, mostly for the fun of it.

             Henry Miller, a self-made millionaire, had more land and more cattle then anyone could possible fathom.  MIller was a small scrapper that had something to prove.  He spoke with a german accent, and was almost completely illiterate.  Miller got his big broke when a well off man named John Devine hit hard winters and dry summers.  The desolate conditions made Devine go bankrupt, and the only bidder at the sale of his things was Henry Miller.

         John Devine came to Harney County in 1869, at the age of thirty years old.  Devine settled on White Horse Creek, which is to the east of Steens Mountain.  He often dressed in Spanish-don-style clothes, and called the rancher in the Spanish mold and considered the real storybook cattleman that Oregon had ever had.  Devine's biggest downfall was he counted his chickens before they had a chance to hatch.  He knew someday that his lands would be worth millions but did not wait for that to happen before he began to act as though he already had them.

There are many more contributors and destroyers of the Steens area.  Among this list is The Smyth Family, Bill Hanley, Joe Fine and General Crook to name just a few.  I strongly recommend, if you are interested in learning more about the people of the Steens area, to check with you local library for history books on the Steens Mountain area or by searching for Burns or Harney County information.

*Photographs on the History/Settlers page are courtesy of the National Park Service, Whitman Mission National Historic Site.