In 1855, concerned about a potential Indian uprising, American settlers in the Puget Sound area of Washington state formed four companies of soldiers. One of these companies, Eaton’s Rangers, attempted to apprehend Nisqually chief Leschi. Leschi and his brother Quiemuth were peacefully cultivating their wheat fields when the Rangers moved in. Warned of the Rangers’ approach, Leschi and Quiemuth fled their homes.
According to Carole Seeman, in her chapter in Indians, Superintendents, and Councils: Northwestern Indian Policy, 1850-1855:
“This action of the Rangers clearly instigated the war on Puget Sound.”
Following this initial incident, the Rangers then roamed the country harassing peaceful Indians.
Shown above is a portrait of Chief Leschi shown in the Lewis Army Museum.
Nisqually warriors under the leadership of Leschi attacked the Americans in the White River Valley. They were careful to attack only the American volunteers. They made it known to the American settlers that they were protesting Stevens’ treaties. In the words of one settler:
“The Indians sent us word not to be afraid—that they would not harm us.”
At White River, two American families were warned that the Indians were coming. The families, some of whom were members of the volunteer companies, stayed and were attacked. Nine people were killed, but the warriors took the children—two boys and a girl—and delivered them unharmed to an American steamer at Point Elliot.
The Portland Weekly Oregonian called for action:
“…these inhuman butchers and bloody fiends must be met and conquered, vanquished—yes, EXTERMINATED; or we can never hope for, or expect peace, prosperity, or safety.”
The Americans responded to the White River “massacre” by herding 4,000 peaceful Indians to Fox Island so that they could be carefully watched. Many of the captives died from inadequate food and shelter.
In his book The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek: A Tragic Clash Between White and Native America, Richard Klugar reports:
“Nisqually tradition continues to hold that Leschi was a human warrior who denounced the White River killings as terror tactics hurtful to the Indian cause and thereby earned fierce enmity among those guerrillas who disagreed. Majority support for this view may be inferred from the absence of any further multiple atrocities against white noncombatants over the remainder of the Indian uprising.”
Leschi attempted to draw all the tribes of Western Washington into a general war against the Americans, but his coalition of Nisqually and Puyallup warriors never numbered more than a few hundred. According to the Lewis Army Museum:
“Pushed into armed conflict, Leschi attempted to enlist other tribes to resist American settlement south of Puget Sound. He and his allies led a series of raids against isolated farms and even attacked the frontier settlement of Seattle. Gen. John E. Wool, commanding the Department of the Pacific, believed the undiscipline local militia severely complicated the Army’s attempt to enforce security in the region.”
Indians Imprisoned
The Indian tribes in the southwestern portion of the territory were in close communication with Nisqually, Klickatat, and Yakama warriors. While these tribes had no tradition of warfare, but tended to be business-oriented (i.e., traders), the Americans were fearful that they would join the Indian uprisings. Americans with rifles began to raid the peaceful Indian villages, disarming the Indians, and placing them under surveillance. Some of the Indians—Upper and Lower Chehalis—were herded together on Sidney Ford’s farm near Steilacoom; some of the coastal Indians, including the Cowlitz, were placed in a “local reservation” on the Chehalis River; and the Chinook were placed inland at Fort Vancouver. In her chapter in Indians, Superintendents, and Councils: Northwestern Indian Policy, 1850-1855, Carole Seeman reports:
“Crowded together, denied access to widespread food sources and trade, and stripped of their personal property, the southwestern tribes were held captive for almost two years during the war west of the Cascades.”
Fox Island
In 1856 Leschi, with a fleet of six war canoes and 33 armed warriors, traveled to Fox Island. Here Leschi met with John Swan and told him that he had come on a diplomatic mission, not a war party. Richard Kluger reports:
“Once the two men were seated, Leschi asked Swan to convey a message to the white authorities: his people were not fighters by nature and had taken up arms only because they had been misled at Medicine Creek into accepting a hellish reservation; they wanted no more than enough space to live as they were accustomed.”
Swan sent a messenger to Fort Seliacoom to ask Captain Erasmus Keyes, the commanding officer, to meet in council with them. Keyes, in turn, sent a request to Fort Nisqually to borrow the Beaver, an old paddle-wheel steamer operated by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Keyes then used the steamer to dispatch an expeditionary force against Leschi.
While Swan rowed out to the steamer to determine if the Americans had come to negotiate peace—they had not—Leschi quietly recruited about 24 more warriors from the Indians imprisoned on Fox Island. Then the Nisqually canoes slipped away undetected at night.
Governor’s Response
There were some people who openly opposed the war against the Indians in the Puget Sound area. In response, Governor Stevens detained people who were opposed to his war against the Indians. When the Chief Justice of the Territory issued a writ of habeas corpus for the release of these opponents, the Governor simply declared martial law:
“Whereas, in the prosecution of the Indian war, circumstances have existed affording such grave cause of suspicion, such that certain evil disposed persons of Pierce county have given aid and comfort to the enemy, that they have been placed under arrest, and ordered to be tried by a military commission; and whereas, efforts are now being made to withdraw, by civil process, these persons from the purview of the said commission.”
With these words, the Governor suspended the functions of all civil officers in the county.
Governor Isaac I. Stevens also called for the extermination of all “hostile” Indians. Richard Kluger writes:
“The governor’s fevered resolve to punish Leshi seemed to go beyond just an understandable desire for revenge against him for having been instrumental in the Indian uprising and the events that culminated in Steven’s disastrous decision to decree martial law.”
Hunting Peaceful Indians
Encouraged by Stevens’ call for extermination, American volunteers began to hunt down peaceful Indians. Richard Kluger writes:
“In deep denial of his contribution to the outbreak of hostilities, Stevens would take it out on the Indians’ collective hides and, in the process, become an out-of-control avenger.”
The militia was ordered to consider all Indians as enemies, and they were given a license to kill.
At the Nisqually River, the Washington Mounted Rifles under the command of H.J.G. Maxon encountered an encampment of 40-50 Nisqually, mostly women and children, who were fishing and trying to hide out from the war. With a license to kill, the soldiers shot at everything that moved. Their initial targets were the Indians who were slow and decrepit; when they ran out of these targets, they chased the fleeter victims into the water, which soon ran red with their blood. According to tribal oral tradition, some infants had their skulls dashed on the rocks. About 30 Indians, nearly all women and children, were killed.
Seeking Peace
Wishing to put an end to the bloodshed, Leschi sent his brother Quiemuth as an emissary to the Governor to indicate his willingness to surrender. Quiemuth was murdered in the Governor’s office. A group of men entered through an unlocked door, briefly scuffled with the Americans who were guarding the Indians, shot Quiemuth through the hand and chest, and then, when struggling to his feet, they stabbed him in the heart with a knife with a very fine blade. The men then fled and were not pursued by the guards. While the murderer was arrested, he was not brought to trial, as none of the Americans would testify against him. Richard Kluger writes:
“The meaning of such an appalling act of lawless retribution, carried out with impunity, was not lost on the tribes of Puget Sound.”
Stevens renewed his calls for the Indian leaders’ heads and offered a reward. In response, Sluggia, Leschi’s nephew, revealed his uncle’s location in exchange for 50 blankets. Subsequently, Leschi was captured by the Americans.
Sluggia became an outcast for the betrayal of his uncle. Wahelut (Yelm Jim) tracked Sluggia down, shot him to death, and then rolled the body off the edge of a bluff in the Nisqually basin. Richard Kluger reports:
“Almost everyone in Indian Country knew of and approved the killing. White officials, too, likely knew who the revenge killer was but chose not to pursue him on the ground that it was intratribal business.”
Council
As a result of this brief war in which the Indian warriors demonstrated impressive powers, the Americans met with the Indians at Fox Island. The Indians told the Americans of their dissatisfaction with the 1855 treaties. Governor Isaac Stevens, on the other hand, insisted that all of the treaty troubles stemmed from the Indians themselves. Before an audience of Indians who had participated in the earlier treaty councils, he went on to recite a version of history which seemed to be pure fantasy. He insisted that the Americans had never violated their pledges of friendship and asked those present why they went to war. Stevens did, however, promise to give them larger tracts with ground for horses.
Assessment
In Washington, Isaac Sterret, the commander of the U.S.S. Decatur assessed the Puget Sound War in a letter to Secretary of War Jefferson Davis:
“The valor and prowess of the Indians has been greatly underrated…[T]he whole military resources of the Territory are totally inadequate to conduct the war with success, even to afford protection to the settlers.”
With regard to Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens, Richard Kluger writes:
“The governor also continued to believe that the suddenly dire Indian problem was the result not of oppressive and relentless treatymaking on his part but the tribes’ treachery in forsaking their solemn vows to uphold the written agreements.”
The governor’s plan:
“My plan is to make no treaty whatever with the tribes now in arms; to do away entirely with the reservations guaranteed to them; to make a summary example of all the leading spirits, and to place as a conquered people, under the surveillance of troops, the remains of those tribes on reservations selected by the President, and on such terms as the Government in its justice and mercy now vouchsafe to me.”
More 19th century American Indian histories
Indians 101: The Tlingit Rebellion of 1802-1806
Indians 201: The war against the Yavapai
Indians 201: The Bannock Indian War
Indians 201: The Cayuse Indian War
Indians 201: The Modoc War
Indians 201: The Sheepeater Indian War
Indians 101: California's War on Indians, 1850 to 1851
Indians 101: The Lame Cow War
