supplied another staple in the form of acorns which are leached, cooked and eaten. Kalapuya, Chinook and Molala peoples of the Willamette Valley currently are included among the confederated tribes that make up the Grand Ronde and Siletz Nations. After reports of the Lewis and Clark Expedition were published in about 1807, a small and steadily increasing stream of isolated pioneer groups began settling the valley and improving routes from the east set up by fur traders and mountain men. From the 1841 Oregon Trail opening, when the effort of many years finally widened the fur traders' mule trails into an improved rough road just capable of carrying the width of a wagon, settlers charged into the region along the new trail, creating new settlements centered about Oregon City as the early capital, even before ownership of the region was settled. So many people came that the valley led the way to achieving statehood less than 16 years after it was claimed by the United States in 1846. A small part of the Willamette Valley ecoregion is in southwestern Washington around the city of Vancouver, which was once the site of an early colonial-era settlementFort Vancouver. The Willamette Valleyserved with its sawmills, lush productive farms, handy river transport network, and nearby timber and mineral resourcesdeveloped naturally as a cultural and major commercial hub, as the Oregon Country became the Oregon Territory. The Hudson's Bay Company controlled the fur trade in the valley and the rest of Oregon Country in the 1820s and 1830s from its Columbia District headquarters at Fort Vancouver. Joint U.S.–British occupancy, in effect since the Treaty of 1818, ended in 1846 with the Oregon Treaty. The Willamette Valley was connected to California's Central Valley by the Siskiyou Trail. The first European settlements in the valley were at Oregon City and Champoeg. The first institution of higher learning on the West Coast, today's Willamette University, was founded in the valley at Salem by Jason Lee, one of the many Oregon missionaries who settled in the valley. In the early 1850s all of the indigenous peoples of the Willamette Valley were coerced into removal from the valley, cession of all their lands and extinction of aboriginal title in the valley. They were rounded up and taken to the Grande Ronde Reservation, with a few being assigned to the Coast Indian Reservation, today the Siletz Reservation. Boarding schools were set