01/15/2025
Here is a little bit of history as we approach the 144th Anniversary on January 18th, of the establishment of the Spokane Indian Reservation.
On April 9, 1872, by Executive Order, a reservation was created for the "Methow, Okanagan, San Poel, Lakes, Colville, Calispel, Spokane, Coeur d'Alene and other scattering bands of Indians in Washington," This reservation extended from the Spokane and Little Spokane rivers north to the 49th parallel, and from the Columbia River eastward to the Pend d"Oreille River and the 117th Meridian. The order was revoked July 2, 1872, and instead a reservation was created encompassing the land between the Columbia and Okanogan Rivers south of the 49th parallel. However, the Spokane refused to remove from their Territory to the newly created reservation, which eventually became the Colville Indian Reservation.
In 1874, General Davis met with Spokane leaders at Spokane Falls to discuss a reservation for the Spokane. Reverend H.T. Cowley accompanied Chief Garry to the meeting and reported that the General treated Garry in a very cool manner and stated to that he had no interest in creating a reservation for the Spokane.
On March 3, 1875, Congress enacted 18 Stat. 402, 420, "which provided that Individual Indians who renounced their tribal relations and become citizens could acquire patents to tracts of land occupied by them." The Spokane Indians refused to sever their tribal relations, or to leave their own lands to reside upon the Colville Indian Reservation. They continued to express a desire to remain in their own country and to retain possession of their fisheries along the Spokane River."
On August 18, 1877, Indian Inspector E.C. Watkins, General Frank Wheaton and Captain M.C. Wilkinson met with the Spokane and offered a document to the Spokane leaders. The leaders would agree to remove by November 1, 1877 to a tract of land north of Spokane River, south of a line extending from the mouth of Numchin Creek of the Columbia River east to the source of the Chamokane Creek. The document was then executed by six Indians who are each identified as chiefs or headmen of the Lower Spokane Band. By Field Order No. 3 on September 3, 1880, the Army directed that the tract identified in the August 18, 1877 Agreement should be protected from white settlement in anticipation of an Indian Reservation being established in that area. On January 18, 1881, President Rutherford B. Hayes issued an Executive Order establishing the 154,602.57-acre Spokane Indian Reservation.
The 1881 Executive Order Reservation included many principal permanent village sites of the Lower Spokane. Many of the Lower Spokane's therefore did not have to "move" to the Reservation. However, even the Lower Spokane residing on the Reservation continued their subsistence activities by participating in their traditional seasonal rounds throughout their aboriginal territory until the early 1890's. Meanwhile, most of the middle and upper Spokane refused to relocate to the Reservation, instead remaining within their traditional environs, even amidst ever-increasing non-Indian settlement.
By July 25, 1881, with the arrival of the first rail line in the city, the Northern Pacific, the City of Spokane (then called Spokane Falls) had become the region's trade hub. With the discovery of gold in the Coeur d' Alene mountains of northern Idaho in 1883, the population of the City of Spokane grew to 1,000. By early 1887 the city's population swelled to over 15,000. Piece by piece, non-Indians encroachment was enveloping the land base and fishing sites necessary for the Spokane to maintain their traditional seasonal rounds. As the non-Indian population increased, the Spokane residing off the reservation became increasingly marginalized and the need for reaching an agreement with the Tribe became ever pressing.
On May 15, 1886, Congress established the Norwest Indian Commission, in part to address the ever-deterioration condition of the off-Reservation Spokane. On March 18, 1887, the Northwest Commission met with Spokane leaders, which resulted in an agreement under which the Spokane ceded all rights, title and claims to any and all lands lying outside the Reservation and agreement by the off-Reservation Spokane to move to the Spokane Reservation, or nearby reservation. In exchange, the Tribe received $127,000.00, to be used for er****on of houses, and purchase of cattle, seeds, and farm implements. Congress ratified the agreement on July 13, 1892. Garry, Lot, Louis, and Enoch were among the Spokane signatories to the Agreement.
Even after the ex*****on of the 1887 Agreement, many Middle and Upper Spokane refused to relocate to nearby reservations, including Louis and Enoch, who did not give up their aboriginal residences until 1895, and even then many of their people stayed in locations around the City of Spokane and along the Spokane River, in places where they had not yet been pushed out by the whites.
The construction of several dams along the Spokane River between 1890 and 1911 hastened the relocation of the off-Reservation Spokane. During this period, seven dams were constructed along the Spokane River, from Post Falls Dam at the headwaters to Little Falls Dam at the river mile 29, which resulted in the destruction of the Tribe's salmon fishery along that entire stretch of river. Salmon continued to spawn downriver from Little Falls Dam into the late 1930's when Grand Coulee Dam, under construction since 1933, blocked all salmon and steelhead from the upper Columbia River Basin. Upon the completion of Grand Coulee Dam in 1942, Lake Roosevelt was created, which raised the water levels of the Columbia and Spokane Rivers some 70 feet, wiping out the Spokane Tribe's remaining salmon fishery and inundating Reservations lands, sacred sites and burial sites along both rivers.
