In 1855 the United States, acting on its desire to obtain land for American settlers and the railroad, held a treaty council with about 5,000 Indians from several tribes at Walla Walla, Washington. The negotiations, led by Washington Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens, relied on lies, omissions, intimidations, threats, racial stereotypes, and ignorance of Indian cultures. The Americans came to the treaty conference with a prepared treaty which they wished to impose upon the Indian nations of the Plateau.
The Indian leaders were angered by the arrogant and haughty way Stevens talked to them. Peopeo Moxmox, one of the Walla Walla leaders, then told the Americans:
“You have spoken in a manner partly tending to evil. Speak plain to us.”
The treaty which was imposed on the various Indian nations established the Umatilla Reservation in Oregon for the Walla Walla, the Umatilla, and the Cayuse. While these were distinct and autonomous Indian nations, the United States viewed them as a single tribe.
In the treaty council, Washington Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens had promised the Indians that that would have two or three years before they would be required to move to the reservations and their lands would be opened to American settlement. However, just twelve days after the treaty had been signed, and before it was ratified by the United States Senate, Governor Stevens announced that the lands were now open for settlement.
In 1856, the United States and militia groups organized by American settlers and miners declared war on the Yakamas and other Plateau tribes.
The Oregon Volunteers, frustrated by their inability to locate Yakama leader Kamiakin, turned their attention to the friendly Walla Walla and their leader Peopeo Moxmox. Their goal was to capture, conquer, and kill Peopeo Moxmox. In his book The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest, Alvin Josephy calls Peopeo Moxmox:
“…an Indian leader with every reason to turn with bitterness against the Americans, but a man who had remained to the end a peace chief, and not a warrior.”
At the Touchet River, the American militia group encountered Peopeo Moxmox with a group of about 60 Walla Walla and Palouse warriors. Peopeo Moxmox and four other chiefs approached the Americans under a white flag of truce. He asked the American why they were there and was told that the army was there to punish him and his people. Peopeo Moxmox denied committing any crimes. The army responded by violating the flag of truce by holding Peopeo Moxmox and his companions as hostages.
The capture of Peopeo Moxmox angered many Indians and solidified their opposition to the Americans. When a general battle with the Plateau Indians started, Peopeo Moxmox was murdered by the Americans, and his body mutilated. One of the Oregon volunteers reported that there was an attempt to escape on the part of the Indians. He described the scene:
“It was all over in a minute, and three of the five prisoners were dead; another was wounded, knocked senseless and supposed to be dead, who afterward recovered consciousness, and was shot to put him out of his misery, while the fifth was spared because he was a Nez Perce.”
Another report claimed that Peopeo Moxmox was knocked to the ground and the volunteers fired their weapons point blank into his body. In his book “Hang Them All” George Wright and the Plateau Indian War, Donald Cutler reports:
“The soldiers then cut off his hands, gouged out his eyes, cut off his ears, and flayed his skin.”
In their book Renegade Tribe: The Palouse Indians and the Invasion of the Inland Pacific Northwest, Clifford Trafzer and Richard Scheuerman write:
“The volunteers murdered Peopeo Moxmox but defended their actions as justifiable because they felt that the chief was stalling for time to allow the Indians to mobilize their forces. Besides, the soldiers maintained that if released, the chief would rise up against the Americans.”
General Wool would later write that:
“Extermination of the Indians was the order of the day, and no effort on the part of the Territorial officers were made to check it”
The Oregon Volunteers fought a four-day battle against the Walla Walla and Palouse warriors.
More American Indian histories
Note: Indians 201 is an expansion of an earlier essay.
Indians 101: The 1855 Walla Walla treaty council
Indians 201: An Indian victory in Eastern Washington in 1858
Indians 101: The 1856 battle at the Cascades, Oregon
Indians 101: The 1855 Battle at Connell's Prairie, Washington
Indians 101: The 1856 Battle of Seattle
Indians 301: The Puget Sound War
Indians 101: Stealing Chief Comcomly's Skull
Indians 101: Ilchee, a Powerful Chinook Woman