Joseph Lane, a stong advocate of slavery and anti-Indigenous efforts, has recently been met with great criticism from Oregonians. As the namesake of Lane County, Lane’s questionable history has caused disapproval from residents, even leading county officials to debate renaming it.  

Lane was the first territorial governor of Oregon and was prominent in state politics through the 1850s. Originally from Indiana, Lane became popular during the Mexican–American War, where he became a colonel and then Brigadier General.

Marc Carpenter, a historian and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oregon, has spent time researching and writing about Lane’s life.

Lane was most famous nationally for running as vice president for the southern Democratic ticket in the 1860 presidential election, Carpenter said. Of the four presidential tickets, Lane’s was the most pro-slavery.. Lane and his running mate, John C. Breckinridge, came close, but Abraham Lincoln ended up winning the election.

Despite being popular nationally, many Oregonians did not like Lane, Carpenter said.

“He was rapidly pro-slavery throughout his political career, but also very sympathetic with the Confederacy,” Carpenter said. “Oregon, which was a strong union state in most of the northern part of Oregon, really didn’t care for him.”

Now, Lane’s questionable history has become a source of modern-day debate. With such outwardly racist and anti-Indigenous beliefs, many Oregonians believe that Lane County should be renamed. Carpenter suggested renaming the county after a different Lane: Harry Lane.

Harry Lane was Joseph Lane’s grandson, but, according to Carpenter, he embodied a “closer fit with the values of contemporary Lane County.”

Harry Lane was a trained medical doctor who later began a career in politics. Throughout his medical career, he became known as the “poor people’s doctor,” because he treated Portlander’s in need without charge, the Oregon Encyclopedia said.

He became the mayor of Portland in 1905 and was reelected in 1907. He was also a senator in Oregon from 1912 until his death in 1917. Famously an anti-corruption crusader, Harry Lane fought against business corruption and corrupt government contracts, Carpenter said.

According to the Oregon Encyclopedia, Harry Lane supported women’s rights and campaigned for women’s suffrage. He appointed Esther Pohl Lovejoy as Portland’s first city health officer, along with Lola G. Baldwin as the nation’s first female police officer.

Along with the suggestion of Harry Lane, some people have been advocating to rename the county after the Kalapuya sovereignty, whose tribes were native to the Willamette Valley. A petition advocating to rename Lane County to honor the Kalapuya people has reached over 1,200 signatures.

Along with his racist ties, Joseph Lane approved of the killings of Native Americans.

“He was very appreciative of the killing of Native people en masse,” Carpenter said. “He wrote about how fortunate it is when they have a woman and children with them [when traveling] because then they’re slower and, to quote, ‘None would make it across the river.’”

Carpenter also said that Joseph Lane reportedly bragged about sexually assaulting Native women to help his primary campaign, which did end up being successful. Although Lane’s strong racism toward Native Americans and Black people would be condemned in modern-day Oregon, Carpenter said that those opinions were not unpopular at the time. 

“In the 1850s, Oregon was a violently white supremacist place,” Carpenter said. “So being pro-slavery was not necessarily a problem for him, politically. Being anti-native was a benefit for him, politically.”

Lane also reportedly owned enslaved people himself —  two boys, Carpenter said. Lane received one boy, named John, as a gift, but little is known about him. There is a greater record of Lane’s second boy, Peter Waldo. Waldo was a Black Indigenous Person of Color who James Abbott — who had enslaved Waldo’s sister, Louisa — had given as a gift to Lane.

While slavery was not legal in Oregon during the time, records from the Oregon State Archive show that Lane and Abbott described their ownership over the Waldo children as an “apprenticed” relationship. In his farm journal, Lane mentioned John and Peter by name and described them doing labor around his farm.

Lane County was originally named in 1851, a time where discriminatory beliefs were more acceptable in society, Carpenter said.