They are resilient, and they are thriving. Volume I. Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, London. Electronic document. Ray, Verne F. Pacific Northwest Quarterly 22 2 Michael J. Ross, Spokane, Washington. Technical Fisheries Report No.
The traditional Spokane homelands extended along the Spokane River from the present day city of Spokane east to the Idaho border and west to the confluence of the Spokane and Columbia Rivers.
The Spokane shared both economic and cultural ties to neighboring groups including both the Kalispel to the east, and the Chewelah to the north. According to Grant et al. The Chewelah occupied the Colville Valley to the north. The Chewelah were an offshoot band of the Kalispel that migrated to the Colville Valley, and were later absorbed into the Spokane Tribe.
Prior to the formation of the Spokane Indian Reservation, it has been documented that the Spokane utilized over three million acres of land. The Spokane lived in small villages made up of bands, which were grouped into three divisions along the Spokane River.
The Lower Spokane occupied the area around the mouth of the river and upstream to Tum Tum. Their camps centered around the Little Falls of the Spokane.
As hunter-gatherer peoples, the various groups were seasonally on the move from one site to another to hunt, fish or harvest the many resources upon which they relied both for subsistence and for trade.
Despite good relations between Stevens and Chief Garry, immediately upon his return to Olympia, Stevens recommended that the Indian title to the land between the Cascade and Rocky Mountains be extinguished and that the Indians be placed on reservations. To that end, Stevens met with the western Washington tribes to negotiate treaties of cession in the spring of Some 5, Indians, including a delegation of Spokane, met with the governor, and rejected his proposal for the creation of a single, large joint reservation.
Stevens later had to settle for three separate treaties and three reservations for the Yakima, the Nez Perce, and the Walla Walla, Umatilla and Cayuse. The Spokane were not party to these treaties. Stevens returned to the Columbia Plateau to meet with the Spokane in December, This was a period of white encroachment into Indian territories and the newly created Indian reservation lands, and the rich farmlands were being overrun.
Indian Wars broke out between the white settlers squatting on Indian lands and the tribes. Stevens negotiations with the Spokane were halted when the Yakima went to war. Although he was to return the following year, he was unable. The continued invasive settlement on Indian lands led to hostilities; which the Spokane joined. With their allies, they defeated Colonel Steptoe at Pine Creek. Retaliation by Colonel George Wright was particularly brutal and resulted in the hanging of several Indians.
He also destroyed horses. Wright negotiated a treaty with the Spokane that was never presented to Congress. The Spokane, with other tribes of northeastern Washington and northern Idaho remained without a treaty during the s. In the meantime, white settlers and miners continued to move onto unceded Indian Territory. The first established reservation extended from the Spokane and Little Spokane rivers north to the Canadian border, from the Columbia River east to Pend Oreilles River and the th Meridian.
However rather than move six hundred settlers off the reservation, and move all the Indians onto it, a second order was issued that restored the reservation to public domain.
The order established a new reservation for the area now the Colville Indian reservation , but the Spokane would be required to move from their traditional area of occupancy. The Spokane wanted to remain in their own country along the Spokane River, and refused to remove to the newly created reservation.
Most of the Spokane reluctantly moved to the Spokane Indian Reservation established by [the third] executive order issued There also remained small bands that continued to traverse their former territories during this period, as well, and the off-reservation bands of the Spokane continued to refuse to relocate. Three simultaneous events succeeded in destroying the former economy of the Spokane and surrounding tribes: the depletion of the salmon runs, the destruction of the buffalo herds and white settlement across the region.
Already legislation was put into motion to satisfy the demands of settlers who desired the agricultural land located within the reservation boundaries. Following relocation on reservations the tribes were also subjected to the General Allotment Act of , also known as the Dawes Act.
This policy was designed to effectively dissolve Indian reservations and open reserved Indian lands to white settlement. It was believed that through the process of assimilation, tribal ties would be destroyed, and the Spokane Indian Tribe would disappear as an identifiable social entity. Between and Congress implemented the general allotment policy on the Spokane Indian Reservation, and in the Colville Valley among the Chewelah.
The experiment to turn hunter-gatherer peoples to sedentary farmers was a failure. The Spokane Tribe of Indians ancestors inhabited much of northeastern Washington which consisted of approximately 3 million acres. At times they extended their hunting, fishing, and gathering grounds into Idaho and Montana. Spokane ancestors were a river people, living a semi-nomadic way of life hunting, fishing, and gathering all creator had made available to them. Early in the 19th century, Indian and white fur trappers out of the east came into the northern Columbia Plateau forests.
They were friendly with the native people they encountered. They often lived with them, took on their customs, and intermarriage was not uncommon. In , the Spokane commenced major trading with white men. However, smallpox, syphilis, influenza and other diseases, unwittingly introduced by the white man, proved to be disastrous to native peoples, including the Spokane.
Entire villages were wiped out. Following the Gold Rush in California, prospectors looked for gold elsewhere in the West. Gold seekers arrived in Washington territory in the s and '60s. They were frequently unruly, caring little about Indians and their rights. If a white man was killed, U.
Indian wars in the inland Northwest erupted as a result. Native veterans of the wars were assumed to be murderers and were killed. From onward, the Spokane shared the fate of numerous other tribes in the Northwest and elsewhere. Land-hungry homesteaders poured into the Plateau region and forced off the original inhabitants.
Indians from disparate tribes were concentrated onto reservations, which compromised their tribal identity. The Prophet Dance of the 19th century seems to have been a reaction against the increasing compromise of ancestral culture by the new influences. Natural resources that Native Americans had depended upon were exploited to the point of destruction.
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