USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. III > Part 23
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37
304
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
several tribes had heretofore been as one people; now they were divided. But they would think the matter over together for one more night, and give their answer next day.
The council was accordingly again adjourned, and when it reassembled the commissioners were ready with an amended treaty, providing a separate reservation for the Cayuses, Umatillas and Walla Wallas. Some additional annuities were provided for the principal chiefs, and for the son of Peo-peo-mox-mox, and the old chief himself was to be per- mitted to open a trading store on his own account.
These amendments were received with favor. Young Chief was among the first to give his assent. Peo-peo-mox- mox followed and, as he closed his speech, said, "Now you may send me provisions." Kam-i-ah-kan alone was silent and surly. Governor Stevens urged him to sign but he stubbornly refused.
Still it seemed probable he would yield, since the sentiment of all present seemed to be changing toward a more favorable view. The commissioners were beginning to be hopeful that the long negotiation was about to end, when a commo- tion occurred outside, and the harmony of the occasion was instantly broken up.
The disturbance was caused by the approach of a small party of Nez Perce hunters, under the lead of an ambitious chief known as Looking Glass, who was second only to the Lawyer, and very jealous of his influence and authority. The party had been east of the mountains in the Blackfoot country, and absent so long that it was supposed that they had fallen a prey to their ancient enemies. They had encountered many perils, and lost most of their horses, but they had slain one of their enemies, whose scalp Looking Glass now carried suspended from a long pole, which he
305
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
bore aloft in triumph as the party rode furiously about the camp, yelling and urging their horses to the utmost.
The assembled savages soon began to be greatly excited by this spectacle, and when the cavalcade finally came to a halt, and Looking Glass advanced to the council table, with his bloody trophy still in his hand, it was evident that he was an object of admiring interest, and that he would seize upon the occasion to vaunt his exploit and strengthen his influence with his people. He was an old man, probably past three score and ten, "and yet his eye was not dimmed nor his strength abated." "My people, what have you done ?" he exclaimed. "While I have been gone you have sold my country. I have come home and there is not left me a place to pitch my lodge. Go home to your lodges. I will talk with you."
It seemed for the moment as if this diversion might put an end to the council, but the Lawyer knew his old-time competitor better than anyone else did, and he assured the commissioners that he would probably calm down in a day or two and perhaps sign the treaty, and in the end he did so. The council was adjourned for the day.
During the evening Governor Stevens invited the chiefs of the Yakimas to his tent and held a long conference with them. Kam-i-ah-kan was not present, and it was apparently without result.
At the council next day Looking Glass was present, but it did not yet suit his purpose to approve of anything. He asked many questions and raised many objections, and finally demanded that the reservation for his people should be enlarged so as to include nearly as much land as they had originally claimed. But none of his demands were granted.
306
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
That evening Peo-peo-mox-mox and Kam-i-ah-kan, with all the prominent chiefs of their tribes, came forward and signed the separate treaties which had been prepared for them. The former had secured a few extra gratuities for himself in the shape of a promise of three yoke of oxen, three yokes, four chains, a wagon, two plows, twelve axes, two shovels, twelve hoes, one saddle and a bridle, a set of wagon harness and a plow harness, and his son was to have a house built, and five acres of land plowed for him, besides an annuity of $100 a year for twenty years.
It was supposed that, in winning this wily old chief over in this way, Kam-i-ah-kan had been won also, but it soon became evident that the two had only conspired to- gether to "keep the word of promise to the ear but break it to the hope."
The Lawyer, Looking Glass and all the other Nez Perce chiefs signed their treaty on the following day, and the council was at an end. The commissioners hoped and believed, and with reason, that a lasting peace had been secured, but they were soon to be disappointed.
"We subsequently discovered," says Mr. Kip, "we had been all the while treading on a mine. Some of the friendly Indians afterwards disclosed to the traders, that during the whole meeting of the council active negotiations were on foot to cut off the whites. The plot originated with the Cayuses in their indignation at the prospect of being deprived of their lands. Their program was first to massacre the escort, which could be easily done. Fifty soldiers against three thousand Indian warriors out on the open plains made rather too great odds. We should have had time, like Lieutenant Grattan at Fort Laramie last season, to have delivered one fire and then the contest would have been
307
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
over. Their next move was to surprise the fort at the Dalles, which they could have done easily, as most of the troops were withdrawn and the Indians in the neighborhood had recently united with them. This would have been the beginning of the war of extermination upon the whites. The only thing which prevented the execution of the scheme was the refusal of the Nez Perces to accede to it, and as they were more powerful than the others united, it was impossible to make the outbreak without their consent. Constant negotiations were going on between the tribes but without effect, nor was it discovered by the whites until after the council had separated."
The treaties made were extremely liberal. Each of the three reservations contained much more land than the tribes could ever profitably use. The Umatillas and Walla Wallas were to be paid $100,000 in annuities, and $60,000 for improving their reservation and removing them to it. The Yakimas were to be paid $200,000 in annuities, and $60,000 for improvements, while the Nez Perces were to have a like amount. Schools and mills were to be built, and teachers and artisans employed to instruct and assist them. In addition to all this several of their principal chiefs were to receive annuities of $500 a year for twenty years, and old Peo-peo-mox-mox was shrewd enough to exact a promise from the commissioners that his annuity for the first year should be paid him in hand, as soon after signing the treaty as it could be got for him in Portland. He lived to have it tendered to him, to refuse it, and to regret that he had done so, but not long enough to have a second tender made.
After arranging to have the Spokanes and other northern tribes summoned to meet him on his return, the governor now hurriedly prepared to set out on his trip to Fort Benton,
308
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
east of the Rocky Mountains, and beyond his jurisdiction, but where he had been authorized, on his own recommenda- tion, in company with General Palmer and Alfred Cummins, superintendent of the Indians in Nebraska, to meet the for- midable and warlike Blackfeet in council, and make a treaty guaranteeing permanent peace between them and all neigh- boring tribes, and with the United States. General Palmer declined the service thus offered, and Stevens set out on the 16th of June, accompanied by his son Hazard, Secretary Doty, Agent Lansdale, Sidney Ford, A. H. Robie, Gustave Sohon, a soldier of the 4th infantry, who was something of an artist, as well as competent to make various scientific observations, and C. P. Higgins in charge of his pack train, together with a considerable party of plainsmen and moun- taineers, some of whom had been members of his surveying party two years before, on his long journey across the moun- tains to the Missouri. The party comprised twenty-two persons in all, including two Indian guides.
On the way eastward he held a council with the Flathead tribes in their country, which lasted for several days, and at its conclusion a treaty similar to the others he had nego- tiated, was signed. The party then resumed their journey, and the governor took advantage of the opportunity, purely as a voluntary service, to examine the country with great care, taking measurements and noting all topographical features, for the purpose of completing his railroad report. The information gained in this way, without extra expense to the government, enabled him to finish a work of great value, in which he had taken a deep interest, but which he had been compelled to suspend through the opposition of Secretary Davis. Most men would have abandoned the work when the government refused to furnish the means
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
309
for it, but Stevens was not a man to leave anything unfinished when his interest in it had once become aroused.
The negotiation with the Blackfeet was entirely successful though somewhat embarrassed and delayed by the incom- petence and lack of enterprise of his associate. On October 24th the governor started westward, to find that the country through which he must travel was already ablaze with war, and that the chiefs with whom he had so lately been in coun- cil were lying in wait to murder him.
CHAPTER XLIV. WAR BEGINS.
A LTHOUGH the Indians who had taken part in all these councils had formally acknowledged their dependence on the government of the United States, and promised "to be friendly with all the citizens thereof," they began almost immediately to make war in every part of the territory where there were white settlers to slaughter. Within two months after the close of the Walla Walla council the Yakimas, Klikitats and Cayuses had murdered a number of prospectors who were traveling through their country, and soon after killed their agent. About the same time, or perhaps a little earlier, the Umpquas and other tribes in southern Oregon com- mitted a series of depredations on the settlers and miners who were passing through their country, and late in October three families were massacred in their homes in the White River Valley, not far from the thriving town of Auburn of the present day. By the first of November all the regular troops in the two territories were marching to engage the hostile tribes, or so disposed in garrison as to afford as much protection as possible for the settlements. The whole territory was in a state of war; one battle had been fought, and the troops had been defeated. Volunteers had been called for, both in Oregon and Washington, and the settlers were arming for their own defense.
There was far more urgent need for them to do this than most of them at the time realized. The uprising had been ably planned, and the organizers of it had been at work for a long time. They had gone from tribe to tribe, from the northern line of California to the British Columbia boundary, and from the Rocky Mountains to the ocean, urging their old-time friends and enemies alike to put aside their differ- ences and unite against the Americans, who were coming to
314
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
dispossess them of their homes. So successfully had they carried on this agitation that the young men everywhere were ready, and could hardly be restrained until a time could be fixed when all would strike together. Could those who had preached this crusade have controlled it as successfully as they had raised it, the settlers would easily have been exter- minated. But this was impossible. Like other agitators, before their time and since, they had raised the storm but they could not control it.
The war followed so closely on the conclusion of Governor Stevens' treaty-making campaign, that some have supposed that the dissatisfaction of the tribes with the treaties made was the cause of it. General Wool, who was in command on the coast, with headquarters at Benicia, California, and who so managed matters that the troops were of but little assistance to the settlers in their troubles, alleged this to be the fact. He also charged that the war was raised by the settlers themselves for the purposes of speculation. But neither of these charges were true, nor did they help in any way to excuse his own negligence and incapacity.
The origin of this war was not different from that which caused all the wars between the settlers and the Indians from the time of Captain John Smith and Miles Standish to George Crook and Philip H. Sheridan, except that in this case the causes for dissatisfaction had been aggravated by the neglect of Congress to do what it was necessary to do, and which the Indians had long been promised it would do. The neglect with which it had treated Oregon affairs from the beginning still continued. It was the same neglect which had left Astor and his partners to struggle alone and unaided with the difficulties they encountered in their efforts to settle and hold the country, and failed to supply them even with
315
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
a "lieutenant's command" for their protection, when assured that it would be sufficient. It was the same neglect which had permitted the title to the country to hang in the balance for nearly thirty years, under an agreement for joint occupation which gave the contesting claimant every advan- tage; the same neglect which, after encouraging the settlers to hope that they would be given homes, under a generous donation law, failed for several years to carry the promise into effect, by enacting the law; the same neglect which had failed to provide them with protection against the savages in their long march across the continent, or to provide them with defense until Whitman and his helpless dependents had been murdered; the neglect which had postponed the settlement of the boundary until it could be postponed no longer. Washington and Oregon were "so far away" that their affairs seemed unimportant to the statesmen of the time, in comparison with those that were nearer the seat of government. But for the recent acquisition of California, it would doubtless still have seemed improbable to many that they could ever become members of the great family of States. If they could they would be free States, and by an element then powerful in the direction and control of the government, no more free States were thought to be urgently needed.
In every other territory the Indian title had been extin- guished before the land was opened to settlement; in Oregon the settlers took possession long before the donation law was passed, and treaties with the Indians were not made until a later date, and in most cases until four or five years later. Had Congress done the things it was manifest it must do, in the order in which it should have done them, and always had done them previously, a principal cause for the alarm
316
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
and dissatisfaction of the Indians would never have existed. As this was not done, and no definite promise was made as to when it would be done, the Indians were left to suspect, and with reason, that nothing would be done at all. More than this, when the first treaties were made they were not ratified, and the Indians were left to suspect that they were a mere sham, intended only to deceive them. They could not understand why the promises made them were not fulfilled. They knew nothing about the need for ratification, nor did they comprehend anything about the difficulties that might attend it. They saw the settlers arriving, taking possession of their lands and proceeding to occupy and im- prove them. They were not consulted about it. They were paid nothing, although promise was frequently made that they should be paid. They could get no information as to when they would be paid, nor could the settlers give them any. They were giving all they had agreed to give, and some mysterious power somewhere, about which they knew little, and which they sometimes doubted if it ever existed at all, was withholding payment from them. More and more they began to suspect that the settlers were deceiving them, and that the government which they talked about so continually, which was to pay them the blankets and other goods they so much desired in exchange for their lands, was nothing but a fiction.
There had been signs of discontent among the Indians, particularly east of the Cascades, before Governor Stevens arrived in Washington. Father Pandozy, at his mission on the Ahtanum, had noted them more than a year before he wrote his warning letter to Father Mesplie at the Dalles, on April 2, 1853. They continued to increase and at length the indications of a general uprising had become so numerous
317
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
that he was alarmed for his own safety, and that of his fellow missionaries, and could no longer keep silence. "The clouds are gathering upon all hands," he wrote, " The tempest is pent up, ready to burst. From your silence I know not what to think. You are on the spot which will be the first victim of the tempest, and you say not a word."
He had heard so much talk of war, from far and near, that he had no doubt all the missionaries were as well informed about it as himself. "Through the whole course of the winter," he says, "I have heard the same thing-that the tribes have united themselves for war. . .. All the Indians upon the left bank of the Columbia, from the Blackfeet to the Chinook inclusive, are to assemble at the Cayuse country; all on the right bank, through the same extent of country, including those from Nisqually, are to assemble on the Sim- coe. The cause of the war is that the Americans are going to seize their lands. . . . Among the chiefs who are for war, some want to make no distinction between Canadians and Americans, but would kill all the whites in their country without distinction-trappers or traders. Others wish to preserve the people of the Hudson's Bay Company, because, they say, 'they are our own people; they marry our daugh- ters; their children are half Canadian and half of our country; we should slay a part of ourselves.'
"What language they hold concerning ourselves (i.e., the priests) I know not."
Major Alvord, who was in command at the Dalles, had heard enough about these ominous war councils to make him think it worth while to send a copy of this letter to his superior in command, when Father Mesplie brought it to his notice. But he was reproved for his forethought, and in
318
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
time superseded, and Father Pandozy was similarly humil- iated. Both were thought to be unnecessarily alarmed; their timely warning was not appreciated.
But the report which they were thus reproved for prudently making known to their associates and superiors continued to receive confirmation. Indian women who were married to or living with the employees of the Hudson's Bay Company and other white men, told them that mischief was brewing and that they would do well to beware. Other Indian women and Indian men who had received favors from, or for other reasons felt kindly toward some white family in their neighborhood, vaguely hinted to them that danger was approaching. These kindly offices were not seriously regarded at the time in most cases, but were remembered long afterward when their meaning became too horribly apparent. In several instances, friendly Indians gave warn- ing to the military officers themselves, but it was not heeded. They refused to believe that danger threatened till war was actually upon them, and in such formidable shape that they were wholly unprepared for it.
They had also received notice of another kind, that the Indians were in bad humor. In March 1855, two Americans, S. M. Hamilton and T. Pierce, had gone into the Yakima or Walla Walla country, to start a stock ranch, but the Indians told them they would permit no settlers to remain among them until their lands had been bought and paid for, and ordered them to leave at once. So much hostility was shown that they were glad to escape with their lives. Colonel Bonneville, who was then in command at Fort Vancouver, . and Major Rains at the Dalles, had been of the opinion, at that time, that Peo-peo-mox-mox ought to be arrested and imprisoned, but Governor Stevens, hopeful of his ability to
319
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
mollify him when he should meet him in council, persuaded them to leave him at liberty. This friendly action he subse- quently had serious cause to regret.
The governor was not without information of his own as to the threatening aspect of affairs. His Indian agents kept him informed, as he and they supposed, but as will appear, they did not think the situation alarming. Even Bolon, who was agent for and traveled widely among the tribes east of the Cascades, and was one of the earliest victims of their ferocity, seems not to have apprehended any danger. Ste- vens himself was so confident of his ability to remove any cause of dissatisfaction, that he took his son with him to the Walla Walla council, although only a few days before starting he received a friendly warning from Father Ricard, who was in charge of the missions among the Yakimas and Cayuses, that those tribes, together with the Walla Wallas, "would attend the council with a hostile purpose, and he would go there at the hazard of his life." It was not until he reached the Dalles that he began to think the situation so serious that he ought to ask for an escort, and was fortunately furnished one.
During the summer and fall of 1857, nearly two years after the war began, J. Ross Browne, a special agent of the treasury department in Oregon, made an apparently thorough inquiry into the causes of the uprising, and em- bodied them in a report to General J. W. Denver, who was then commissioner of Indians affairs. George Gibbs, the scientist who had accompanied the McClellan exploring party in 1853, who had subsequently been a member of Governor Stevens' treaty-making party, and later still attached to the garrison at Fort Steilacoom, during all of which time he had been much among the Indians, studying their languages,
320
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
their character and their habits, and whose opportunities for knowing what they were doing and thinking about were not surpassed by those of any other person in the territory, wrote a letter, earlier in the year, in which the history of the beginning and growth of this hostile spirit among the Indians is ably and fully reviewed. These two papers contain a more complete statement of the causes leading up to the war than can be found elsewhere, and since their publication little information of value has been discovered that they do not contain. Browne is confident that the treaties were not the cause of the war, and he acquits the settlers of having raised it for the purpose of speculation. "The charge," he says, "is absurd and monstrous." Gibbs declares positively that "the war was not caused by any outrage on the part of the whites. "
Browne believes that the discontent among the tribes east of the Cascades was greatly increased, and it doubtless was, by the action of General Palmer in sending back to that region a party of Klikitats, who years before had made raids into the Willamette Valley, finally conquered the weaker and less warlike tribes they found there, and settled in their country. According to Indian usage the country was really as much theirs as their predecessors. Their claim to it had been recognized by the courts, in several cases in which they had been accused of trespassing on the property of white men, and they had besides rendered the settlers efficient ser- vice, notably in Governor Lane's time, in their wars with the Indians farther south, in the Umpqua and Rogue River coun- tries.
These Indians left the Willamette most reluctantly, and from the moment they returned to the north side of the Columbia, they were in a state of war. They had observed
321
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
that the treaties made with the Indians among whom they had been living, had never been carried out, although four years had elapsed since they were made. Meantime the white people had taken possession of the lands which the Indians had relinquished, while those who had been living on claims included in the reservations, had not removed from them, nor were they inclined to do so. None of the payments promised had ever been made, because the treaties had never been ratified. But this the Indians could not understand. The promises they had made they had performed, while none of the promises made them were fulfilled, and nobody could give them any reason, that they could comprehend, why these things were so. Naturally they suspected they had been imposed upon, and these Klikitats, who had so long lived among them, carried back with them a firm conviction that the treaties were a delusion and a snare.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.