In the 1850s, the policy of the United States regarding the Indian nations in eastern Washington was to force Indians onto a few reservations and open up the land for the railroad, for farming and ranching by non-Indians, and for mining. Indians were seen simply as barriers to America’s manifest destiny to “civilize” and “tame” the West. American efforts to colonize eastern Washington can be characterized as ethnocentric, brutal, barbaric, unjust, and racist.
In 1858, two French Canadian miners were murdered near present-day Colfax, Washington. The miners in the area blamed Yakama leader Kamiakin and Palouse leader Tilcoax for the murders, but Mahkeetahkat and Slowiarchy the Younger were the actual culprits. The incident spread fear among the miners who believed that the Indians were going to kill them all. In response, the miners in Colville requested military aid from the army.
In response to the request for aid from the miners in Colville, a military expedition was organized to march from Fort Walla Walla through Palouse country to Colville in order to awe the Indians into submission. However, the army under the leadership of Major Edward Steptoe was defeated.
As a result of Steptoe’s defeat, 600 troops under Colonel George Wright were sent out to meet the Indian forces and inflict heavy casualties upon them. According to an exhibit in the Lewis Army Museum:
“With warriors from the Nez Perce serving as Indian scouts for the army, Col. George Wright led more than 600 troops against non-treaty tribes east of the Cascade Mountains—the largest military campaign in the history of Washington Territory. Wright’s column included dragoons and infantry as well as several small mountain howitzers.”
The result was a ruthless and bloody war with little quarter given to the Indians. The goal was to either put the Indians on remote reservations or to exterminate them.
Regular Army officers who had been trained at the military academy at West Point had been required to take a course on Christian ethics using Emer de Vattel’s 1758 text The Law of Nations, or, the Principles of the Law of Nature Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns. According to Vattel:
“When we are at war with a savage nation, who observe no rules, and never give quarter, we may punish them in the persons of any of their people whom we take (these belonging to the guilty), and endeavor, by this rigorous proceeding, to force them to respect the laws of humanity.”
Executing a prisoner was an acceptable action if the prisoner was a member of a ‘savage nation.’ This was the ethical code guiding the American Army in the war against the Plateau Indians.
The 1858 Treaties
Following the battles of Four Lakes and of Spokane Plains in which the Coeur d’Alene, Spokan, and Palouse warriors were defeated, Colonel George Wright dictated a treaty of peace with the Coeur d’Alenes in Idaho. Coeur d’Alene chief Vincent began by saying:
“I have committed a great crime. I am fully conscious of it, and am deeply sorry for it. I and all my people are rejoiced that you are willing to forgive us.”
In response, Colonel Wright told them:
“You must deliver to me, to take to the General, the men who struck the first blow in the affair with Colonel Steptoe. You must deliver to me to take to Walla Walla, one chief and four warriors with their families. You must deliver up to me all property taken in the affair with Colonel Steptoe.”
He then met with the Spokans in Washington and signed an almost identical treaty with them. One Spokan chief told him:
“I am sorry for what has been done, and glad of the opportunity now offered to make peace with our Great Father. We promise to obey and fulfil [sic] these terms in every point.”
In his book Warbonnets and Epaulets: With pre- and post factors, documented, of the Steptoe-Wright Indian Campaigns of 1858 in Washington Territory, Jerome Peltier reports:
“He continued his diatribe by saying that he had come into the Spokane country to fight and wasn’t interested in peace but if they were tired of war, that they could sue for peace and he would tell them the terms under which they could have it.”
He stated his peace terms:
“You must come to me with your arms, with your women and children, and everything you have, and lay them at my feet; you must put your faith in me and trust to my mercy.”
Colonel Wright directed Spokan Garry to send messengers to chiefs Moses, Big Star, Skloom, and Kamiakin and inform them that they should come in for a conference.
Later Colonel Wright would report:
“I warned them that if I ever had to come into this country again on a hostile expedition no man should be spared; I would annihilate the whole nation.”
Hanging Indians
After signing the treaties with the Spokan and Coeur d’Alene chiefs, Colonel Wright adopted a policy of demonstrating American superiority by simply hanging individual Indians as a way of demonstrating what the military would do if the tribes ever broke the treaties. Those hung were given no trial: they were hung because they were Indians who had lost a war.
Within hours after the treaty council with the Spokan chiefs, Yakama leader Owhi rode into Wright’s camp to ask for peace. He was seized and placed in irons. The next day, Qualchin, Owhi’s son, appeared in the camp to see what had happened to his father. Qualchin and his wife Whist-alks (one of Polatkin’s daughters) rode into camp and up to Wright’s tent. Whist-alks drove a beaded lance into the ground in front of the tent. Qualchin was then seized and fifteen minutes later he was had without a trial on the orders of Colonel Wright. Jerome Peltier reports:
“He was marched to a neighboring tree and when the guard … attempted to put the noose around his neck, fought valiantly against six soldiers, despite the fact his arms were bound and he had an unhealed wound on his side.”
When Palouse chief Polatkin and nine warriors came to talk peace with Wright, the Americans seized one of the warriors and hung him on suspicion of being involved with the murder of two miners in Colfax. There was no trial, no testimony: Wright simply sentenced him to be hung and declared:
“…the fact of his guilt was established beyond doubt, and he was hung at sunset.”
On his return trip to Fort Walla Walla, Wright met a band of ten non-combatant Palouses. Lieutenant Lawrence Kip, writing in his 1859 Indian War in the Pacific Northwest: The Journal of Lieutenant Lawrence Kip, described them this way:
“They are such a worthless set, that there is no idea of treating them with the consideration shown to the other Indian tribes.”
They were taken to the guard house and placed in irons. After threatening them, Wright had six members of the group hung, and forced the council with the others to continue as the victims died, kicking and squirming from nearby trees. He told the Palouses that he would not negotiate a treaty with them and that any Palouses found south of the Snake River or in the Coeur d’Alene villages would be hanged.
On the return to Fort Walla Walla, the unarmed Owhi, bound to his horse, was shot in the head.
At Fort Walla Walla, Wright assembled all of the Indian men. He ordered those who had taken part in the war to stand. Of the 35 who stood, he selected four to be hanged in order to frighten the others. Historian Alvin Josephy, in his book The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest, reports:
“The campaign was closed, but many of the Nez Perces would never forget how the American army had treated the Indians who had surrendered.”
Slaughtering Horses
Colonel Wright’s soldiers found a large Palouse horse herd. They drove the Indians into the hills and captured about 900 horses. The army charged that the horses belonged to Tilcoax, the Palouse leader who was falsely accused of murdering the Colville miners. However, Palouse claimed they belonged to Poyahkin and Penockahlowyun who had not been involved in actions against the army. The army ignored the Palouse claims of ownership and selected 130 horses for their own use. The soldiers then shot the rest.
More American Indian histories
Indians 201: An Indian victory in Eastern Washington in 1858
Indians 101: The 1855 Battle at Connell's Prairie, Washington
Indians 101: The 1856 Battle of Seattle
Indians 301: The Puget Sound War
Indians 201: The murder of Walla Walla chief Peopeo Moxmox
Indians 101: American Indians and the creation of Washington Territory in 1853
Indians 101: Chief Leschi's trial
Indians 201: Sealth (Seattle), Suquamish/Duwamish Leader