Oregon Checkerboard

Monday evening I was soaking in Glenwood Hot Springs when a charming woman, Kelly from Cedar Ridge, sat beside me. She works for the US Forest Service and deals with timber sales. Apparently, timber is done differently in Oregon because of the way land was divied up back when the railroad got involved.
Maybe I have some of my "facts" wrong - so please correct me if you see anything wrong.
A large Indian reservation was stolen outright so that the railroads, timber companies, and such go do what they wanted. A recurring theme has been for the government to treat Native Americans like rats. Reservations were lands deemed worthless. If anything of value was discovered, then some pretense would be concocted to move the reservation or take it outright.
For some strange reason, the land in Oregon got divied up in checkerboard patches. Maybe the government simply gridded it and opened it up for bidding? The result was non-contiguous land ownership between companies. So the result of that checkerboard ownership is a checkerboard of clearcuts.
I need to research this further.