With the creation of Washington Territory in 1853, President Millard Fillmore appointed Isaac I. Stevens as the territorial governor of Washington. In addition, Stevens was also the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the territory and the surveyor appointed to map a northern route for a proposed Pacific railway. In 1855, Governor Stevens organized a large treaty council in Walla Walla, Washington.
Following the Constitution, the United States recognized Indian nations as sovereign entities and thus negotiated treaties with them. A treaty is simply an agreement between two or more sovereign nations. In negotiating treaties with Indian nations, the United States viewed both the treaties, and the Indians themselves, as being temporary. In calling together Indian nations at Walla Walla, the goal of the United States was to establish two reservations, thus freeing up title to vast tracts of land for settlement and for the railroads. In his book “Hang Them All” George Wright and the Plateau Indian War, Donald Cutler reports:
“The ultimate objective was to extinguish the tribes’ title to the land and move the Indians aside in order to make way for the railroads and settlers. From the standpoint of the territorial and federal governments, the decision had already been made; the treaties were necessary to justify the inevitable transfer of land from Indians to whites.”
Totally ignorant of Indian cultures and the fact that the tribes had different languages, customs, and histories, Governor Stevens wanted to restrict the Indians to only two reservations: one in the traditional Nez Perce territory for the Nez Perce, Cayuse, Walla Walla, Umatilla, and Spokan; and one in the traditional Yakama territory for the Yakama, Palouse, Klikatat, Wenatchee, Okanagan, and Colville. In his chapter in As Days Go By: Our History, Our Land, and Our People—The Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla, Antone Minthorn reports:
“All the tribes attending the Treaty Council understood that the U.S. government was forcing the Indians to choose a place for a reservation to prevent war and to stay out of the way of the settlers rushing in to make claims on their land.”
About 5,000 Indians attended the council. In addition to those with whom the United States sought to negotiate treaties, there were observers from other Plateau area tribes.
The Palouse knew about the treaty council at Walla Walla but made a conscious choice not to attend. From an Indian viewpoint, if they did not attend the council and participate in the discussions, they would not be bound by any decisions that would be made. In their book Renegade Tribe: The Palouse Indians and the Invasion of the Inland Pacific Northwest, Clifford Trafzer and Richard Scheuerman write:
“Tragically, the Palouses did not understand that white negotiators regularly drafted treaties without the consent of all members of a tribe.”
Three Palouse chiefs—Kahlotus, Slyotze, and Tilcoax—attended the council in an unofficial capacity and played no role in the official meetings. They observed and spoke with leaders from other tribes.
It should be noted that the Plateau tribes were not isolated and were aware of what had happened to tribes in other areas. Donald Cutler reports:
“Not only were northwest tribes in frequent contact with each other, communication with eastern tribes was not unusual. There had been eastern Indians in the region for years, including several at the Walla Walla conference.”
These eastern Indians included not only the Plains Indians, but Indians such as the Iroquois whose homelands had been east of the Mississippi River.
At the 1854 Medicine Creek Treaty Council, Stevens had simply forged the marks of Leschi and other Nisqually chiefs on the document. Leschi had travelled to the Yakamas and reported to them about Stevens’ deceptive practices.
Upon arriving at the treaty council, the Nez Perce put on a show of horsemanship and dancing. Governor Stevens failed to recognize the significance of the Nez Perce entrance. According to the Nez Perce Tribe, in their book Treaties: Nez Perce Perspectives:
“Our Nez Perce ancestors were not only honoring him as an important person: they were also demonstrating that the Nez Perce are a strong and important people who expect to be treated as equals.”
Indian leadership
In negotiating Indians treaties, the United States negotiators made little effort to understand the nature of Indian government. The negotiators preferred to bargain with dictatorships rather than democracies. Since none of the Plateau Indian nations were dictatorships, this meant that the American negotiators attempted to appoint the chiefs with whom they negotiated. In his book An Arrow in the Earth: General Joel Palmer and the Indians of Oregon, Terrance O’Donnell reports:
“On preparing for the Walla Walla council, Stevens had instructed Agent Bolon to secure selection of a head chief for each tribe and in particular to choose those persons ‘who are best affected toward the American government and people.’”
Writing in 1878 about the Nez Perce in the Walla Walla Treaty Council, Duncan McDonald, in an essay republished in Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars 1865-1890, Volume Two: The Wars for the Pacific Northwest, puts it this way:
“Not being able to gain to his aim the consent of any of the real chiefs, Governor Stevens, a man of much ability and few scruples, cut the Gordian knot for the government by providing a chief freshly manufactured for the occasion.”
The man chosen by the United States to be the supreme chief of the Nez Perce was Lawyer, who is regarded by the Nez Perce as a tobacco cutter (a sort of undersecretary for Looking Glass, Eagle of the Light, Joseph, and Red Owl). In an article in Idaho Yesterdays, Duncan McDonald, who is Eagle of the Light’s nephew, writes:
“In other words, for certain considerations he was prevailed upon to sign away the rights of his brethren—rights over which had had not the slightest authority—and although he was a man of no influence with his tribe, the government, as if duty bound on account of his great services, conferred upon him the title and granted him the emoluments of head chief of the Nez Perces.”
Regarding the appointment of Lawyer--a practicing Christian--as head chief, Kent Nerburn, in his book Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy, reports:
“This designation was met with derision and contempt by the other Nez Perce leaders, who knew that Lawyer held no such authority.”
The United States also preferred to deal with as few Indian nations as possible. American negotiators failed to recognize band and tribal autonomy and simply created fictional tribes with whom they could negotiate. They often assumed that if a people spoke the same language, or languages that were closely related, that they could be considered to be a single tribe. The American negotiators, ignorant of Indian cultures, simply grouped autonomous bands together as if they were a single tribe. In the Walla Walla Treaty Council, for example, the Yakama were not a single tribe but a grouping of 14 related autonomous bands.
The Talks
The negotiations, led by Governor 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.
One of the interpreters for the treaty conference later reported that Governor Stevens had run out of patience with the negotiations and told the Indians:
“If you do not accept the terms offered and sign this paper (holding up the paper) you will walk in blood knee deep.”
Stevens told the Indian leaders that there were some “bad” Americans who would make trouble for the Indians, but east of the mountains the Great Father had taken measures to help his “Indian children” by moving them across a great river where they were away from the “bad” Americans. He carefully omitted any mention of the coercion, starvation, death, and misery that accompanied the removal of the eastern tribes, such as the Cherokee, Choctaw, and others from their homelands to new reservations west of the Mississippi.
According to historian Alvin Josephy, in his chapter on the Walla Walla Treaty Council in The Western American Indian: Case Studies in Tribal History:
“The transparency of the speeches of Governor Stevens and Superintendent Palmer is so obvious that it is a wonder the commissioners could not realize the ease with which the Indians saw through what they were saying. One can only assume either that their ignorance of the Indians’ mentality was appalling or that they were so intent on having their way with the tribes that they blinded themselves to the flagrancy of their hypocrisy.”
The Americans were apparently unaware that the Indians of the Plateau had been told stories of removal for years by the Iroquois, the Delaware, and the Plains Indians. Delaware Jim, for example, had lived with the Nez Perce for many years and gave them a different account of the removal of the eastern Indians.
Stevens told the Indians:
“We want you and ourselves to agree upon tracts of land where you will live; in those tracts of land we want each man who will work to have his own land, his own horses, his own cattle, and his own home for himself and his children.”
According to the Nez Perce Tribe, in their book Treaties: Nez Perce Perspectives:
“Stevens intentionally neglected to tell the Indians that he had specifically selected lands for their reservations that no white man yet wanted, and, perhaps most importantly, he made no mention of his desire to secure land for the railroad.”
Most of the tribal leaders disliked his proposal, so he then proposed a scheme with three reservations. The third reservation was to be in Umatilla country for Umatilla, Cayuse, and Walla Walla.
Stevens made many grand promises to the Indians during the treaty negotiations, most of which were not included in the actual treaties. For example, Stevens promised the Indians that they would not have to move onto the reservations until one year after the treaty was ratified by the Senate. However, the treaty contained a clause that guaranteed “the right to all citizens of the United States to enter upon and occupy as settlers any lands not actually occupied and cultivated by said Indians at this time, and not included in the reservation.” As soon as the treaties are signed and before the Senate ratified them, however, Stevens informed the newspapers that the lands were open for immediate settlement.
During the treaty talks, several Nez Perce keep a written record of what transpires in the meetings.
Indian Response
The Indian leaders were not in agreement about the American proposals, and they were angered by the arrogant and haughty way they are presented. 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.”
Cayuse chief Howlish Wompoon told the Americans:
“Your words since you came here have been crooked.”
Nez Perce leader Lawyer told his people that the agreement would protect their villages from the Americans and that without it, the Americans would simply take their lands. Nez Perce leader Joseph pled that the Americans include his peoples’ Wallowa valley in the Nez Perce reservation.
In his introduction to Indian War in the Pacific Northwest: The Journal of Lieutenant Lawrence Kip, Clifford Trafzer reports:
“Throughout the Walla Walla council, the Indian leadership had commented that they should return to their people to discuss surrendering their land and living on reservations.”
While the United States required that the agreements be discussed and ratified by the Senate, they did not allow a similar option to the Indian nations. According to Clifford Trafzer;
“American Indian policy required treaties and reservations, but Stevens created a hostile climate that culminated in war.”
Signing the Treaties
At the signing of the treaty 14 different tribes and bands were confederated into the fictitious Yakama Indian Nation. The treaty claimed that the Yakama, Palouse, Pisquouse, Wenatshapam, Klikitat, Klinquit, Kow-was-say-ee, Li-ay-was, Skin-pah, Wash-ham, Shyiks, Ochechotes, Kah-milt-pah, and Se-ap-cat were to be considered as one nation. The United States considered the Yakama leader Kamiakin to be the head chief for many Columbia River tribes which were not present at the council and for whom Kamiakin could not and would not speak. While Stevens claimed that Kamiakin had signed the treaty, Kamiakin claimed that he only made a mark of personal friendship. In his biographical sketch of Kamiakin in the Encyclopedia of North American Indians, Clifford Trafzer writes:
“He originally determined to leave the council without signing, but Owhi, Teias, and others pressured him into signing as an act of peace and friendship.”
Yakama oral tradition, according to Paul M. Niebell, the former claims attorney for the Yakama Nation, says that Stephens promised that the Americans would honor the treaty: “as long as (1) great snow- capped mountain stands, (2) as long as the great Columbia River flows from the mountains to the sea, (3) and as long as the great sun rises in the East and sets in the West.”
The Walla Walla treaty also established the Umatilla Reservation in Oregon for the Walla Walla, the Umatilla, and the Cayuse. While the Americans recognized these three tribes as a single tribe, they did not appoint or designate a single overall chief.
Joseph, leader of the Nez Perce Wallamwatkin band, did not sign the treaty. In the words of his son, now known as Chief Joseph, Joseph “claimed that no man owned any part of the earth, and a man could not sell what he did not own.” The United States government, on the other hand, ignorantly assumed that the Nez Perce linguistic groups were a single political unit which meant that leaders recognized by the United States could speak for all of the groups.
The treaty with the Nez Perce clearly indicated that no American was to be allowed on the reservation without the consent of tribal leaders and the Indian agent. In addition, the Nez Perce retained the right to hunt, fish, dig roots, and gather berries on the ceded lands.
More about Indian treaties
Indians 201: First U.S. treaties with the Navajo
Indians 201: The 1854-1855 Western Washington Treaties
Indians 101: The 1837 Winnebago Treaty
Indians 201: The Chippewa Treaty of 1837
Indians 101: The 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty
Indians 201: American Indians and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Indians 101: The California treaties of 1851-1852
Indians 101: The 1863 Nez Perce treaty