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CHAPTER 2SECURING A SPOKANE HOMELAND, 1877-1910
from Frank Grant et. al., A Forest and a Tribe in Transition: A History of the Spokane Indian Reservation Forest 1870 - 1994,
Missoula:1994
Introduction
Between 50 and 75 white settlers gathered at Spokane Falls on July 4, 1876, to celebrate the United States Centennial. Although it was a small gathering, the audience was larger than Reverend Henry T. Cowley, the main speaker, had anticipated. Only four years earlier, J. H. Downing and L. R. Scranton had been the first white men to settle at the Falls. The presence of so many settlers at the Spokane Falls celebration indicated that the region's white population was increasing, and that the growth was concentrated in an area occupied by the Spokane Indians.
During the ensuing three decades, white settlers in the Spokane Falls area exerted pressure on the Spokane to cede Indian land to relocate to one of the region's reservations. Slowly and reluctantly the Spokane relinquished the lands that they occupied and farmed in the Spokane Falls area. Most of the Spokane moved to the Spokane Indian Reservation, established by executive order in 1881.
Even as the Spokane Indians were being urged to move to the reservation, reformers were questioning the federal government's Indian reservation policy. Through legislation promoting allotment in severalty, these reformers sought to dissolve established reservations. Further threatening the Spokane Reservation, the removal of the Spokane to their reservation and the land cessions to which they had agreed, had failed to satisfy the demands of land-hungry settlers who coveted the agricultural lands located within the reservation's boundaries.
Through the General Allotment Act of 1887, also known as the Dawes Act, Congress established a policy that anticipated the dissolution of Indian reservations and the opening of reserved Indian lands to non-Indian entry. Proponents of the Dawes Act envisioned that the Spokane Indians, like others, would secure individual agricultural allotments intermingled with white homesteads. Reformers believed that, through the process of assimilation, tribal ties would be destroyed, and the Spokane Indian Tribe would disappear as an identifiable social entity.
Congress implemented the general allotment policy on the Spokane Indian Reservation between 1902 and 1908. However, a large part of the Spokane Reservation was timberland that could not be used for agricultural allotments or homesteads. Since the Tribe had no means of managing the forest, it negotiated an agreement to sell the Spokane Forest to the United States, which would reserve the land as part of the National Forest System. The proceeds from the sale of timber from the reserve would be paid to the Tribe. Congress, however, rejected the agreement. As a consequence, the Spokane Tribe retained title to the large block of timberland, that became a principal economic resource and a major source of cohesion for the Tribe.
2.1 The Spokane Indian Reservation Established, 1877 — 1881
As late as 1877, the Spokane had not negotiated any treaties with the United States, and the federal government had reserved no land for them. The Spokane feared that the lands that they occupied would be claimed by non-Indian settlers without consideration of the Indians* rights or compensation for the Indians' improvements on their farms. In August of 1877, in response to the uneasiness over the Nez Perce conflict in Idaho and Montana, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Ezra A. Hayt sent United States Indian Inspector E. C. Watkins to Spokane Falls to negotiate an agreement to establish permanent homes for the Spokane, Coeur d'Alene, Pend'Oreille, Okanagon, Colville, Dreamer, and Palouse tribes. All of these tribes were within the jurisdiction of the Colville Agency.1
Living in several locations between the Little Spokane River and the mouth of the Spokane River, the Spokane Indians were divided into three bands that did not speak with a single voice in council. The Upper Spokane, numbering 383, lived on Peone Prairie, east of the mouth of the Little Spokane River. About 40 members of this band, under William Three Mountains, lived between Spokane Falls and Hangman's, or Latah, Creek. Chief Spokane Garry led the Middle Spokane, at times identified as the Falls Band. Numbering around 160, they lived on small farms near Spokane Falls.2 Located throughout the area between Spokane Falls and the mouth of the Spokane River around 320 Lower Spokane, who survived by fishing and farming. Whistle-Poo-sum, also known as "Lot," the "progressive" leader of the Lower Spokane, lived with his band west of the Little Spokane River on four or five thousand acres of good land. Lot's people were fairly prosperous and possessed good houses, barns, and lodges.3
When the council opened on August 16, 1877, Inspector Watkins told the Indians, "It is the wish and the direction of the government that all the Indians should go upon the reservations, or become citizens. "4 The reservation that he proposed for the Spokane was a strip of land along the Spokane River from its mouth to Chamokane Creek. To a majority of the Spokane, this meant either moving from the homes that they then occupied or entering their property under the homestead laws and relinquishing their tribal relations.5 Chief Spokane Garry stated that he wanted to remain near Spokane Falls, for he did not like the country that the inspector had selected for a reservation. Lot, however, indicated that he was willing to go where the inspector sent him and that his people would follow him.6
After three days of negotiations, Watkins and the Spokane reached an agreement, and Watkins reported to General O. O. Howard, "I have not made them any promises, but I intend to secure an appropriation for them next year. "7 Watkins offered no payment for the land and the improvements that the Spokane would relinquish; he made no commitment to aid the Spokane in relocating; and he promised no blacksmiths, carpenters, or teachers to assist in building new homes. The inspector informed Howard that "The Indians present all expressed their friendly feeling toward the whites, and promised to go upon the reservation I have decided to recommend and upon those already established."8
Watkins' statement was not accurate. Though five Spokane chiefs and headmen signed the agreement and accepted the proposed reservation, Chiefs Spokane Garry and William Three Mountains rejected it. They and their bands refused to leave their homes near Spokane Falls. The reservation proposed by Watkins for the bands consisted of the "most barren land" within the Spokane area of occupation, and thus the agreement held little promise for the Tribe.9 Neither Congress nor the President took immediate action on Watkins' agreement, and the Spokane's future home remained in doubt. Shortly after the August 1877 council, William Three Mountains and five Spokane families established a colony at Deep Creek south and west of Spokane Falls, outside the proposed reservation. The remaining Upper and Middle Spokane continued to reside in the Spokane Falls area, but in 1878, Lot and the Lower Spokane moved onto the proposed reservation to new homes along the Spokane River below Chamokane Creek.
There were few non-Indian settlers in the proposed reservation area in the 1870s, but their numbers were increasing, especially on Peone Prairie, around Spokane Falls, and along Deep Creek. The inevitable clashes between off-reservation Indians and non-Indians created a sense of urgency to resolve the issue of a reservation for the Spokane. In 1880 Colonel H. Clay Wood, supported by General Frank Wheaton, called another council at Spokane Falls to announce to the Spokane that they must abandon their roving habits and choose between the reservation and citizenship. Wood indicated that the Interior Department preferred that the Spokane go to a reservation. Since many Spokane farmed and were raising subsistence crops, they were reluctant to abandon their homes and go to a reservation. The Indians were reluctant to enter homesteads because they did not wish to sever their tribal ties, and they were unwilling to pay the commissions and fees necessary to secure their lands. Colonel Wood mentioned no compensation for the Indians who chose to leave their lands and go to a reservation.10
The failure of the government to implement the Watkins' agreement encouraged non-Indian intrusion onto the proposed Spokane Indian Reservation. Such trespass angered General O. O. Howard, who was sympathetic to the plight of the Lower Spokane, and he prodded General William T. Sherman to approve the agreement to establish the reservation. Sherman acquiesced, and on January 18, 1881, President Rutherford B. Hayes signed an executive order creating the Spokane Indian Reservation (Figure 2-1). Its boundaries were described as follows:
commencing at a point where Chemekane Creek (sic) crosses the forty-eighth parallel of latitude; thence down the east bank of said creek to where it enters the Spokane River; thence across said Spokane River westwardly along the southern bank thereof to a point where it enters the Columbia River; thence across the Columbia River northwardly along its western bank to a point where said river crosses the said forty-eighth parallel of latitude; thence east along said parallel to the place of beginning.11
The Spokane were in no hurry to move to the new reservation, for the hilly, forested country appeared to offer them little economic opportunity. They were a people who traveled and traded. They had annually caught and dried great quantities of fish from the Spokane and Columbia Rivers, journeyed far inland to hunt buffalo in what is now Montana, and traded dried salmon for the goods of the plains and mountain tribes. Whereas the non-Indian settlers organized life around the individualized plot of land, the Spokane were a people of large spaces, who viewed life in terms of movement — to buffalo country, to fishing grounds, to visits and celebrations with friends and relatives, the Flathead and the Coeur d'Alene.
Of necessity, however, Spokane life was changing. Each year the fisheries at Kettle Falls and the Spokane River produced less salmon as commercial fishermen increased their catches to meet the demands of the lower Columbia canneries.12 The depletion of salmon in the Columbia and Spokane rivers coincided with the destruction of the buffalo on the Montana plains and the founding of non-Indian settlements across the northwestern territories. The Spokane could no longer depend on salmon runs for trade nor was it possible for them to "go to buffalo." By 1880 the traditional Spokane economy had been destroyed.
During the 1870s several Spokane responded to economic dislocation by turning to farming. In 1880 Colville Indian Agent John Simms indicated that small bands continued to roam through the area, refusing to go upon a reservation or to take up homesteads, but that "the greater number of Spokane Indians ... have farms upon which they have made improvements and from which they raise most of their subsistence."13 Most of these farms, however, were located on the Little Spokane River, near Spokane Falls, and along the Spokane River west of the Falls. These farming communities were outside the proposed Spokane Indian Reservation. For the Spokane who had begun the transition from hunting and fishing to farming, the Spokane Indian Reservation seemed a poor area to develop farms.14
Although the reservation lacked the agricultural lands required to implement the small-farm economy envisioned by federal Indian policy, it did contain timber resources that provided a potential economic base for continued tribal existence. In 1881, however, neither government negotiators nor tribal leaders gave the timber resource much thought. There is no indication in the records of the negotiations that the commercial value of the Spokane timberlands was even considered. Federal policy makers were committed to an agricultural economy and ignored alternative economic opportunities.
During the following 30 years, however, the Spokane and Interior Department officials became increasingly aware of the value of the Spokane forest. The influx of settlers increased the demand for timber in the Inland Empire, while the failure of reservation agriculture to meet early expectations forced the Spokane to search for economic alternatives. Also, a national conservation impetus increased general awareness of the importance of timber resources. Although some of the Spokane's traditional fishing sites were located within the reservation boundaries and the reservation contained limited agricultural and grazing land, the major resource on the Spokane Indian Reservation was timber — pine, fir, and larch. Between 1881 and 1908, the Spokane gradually grew cognizant of the economic value of their forest, and the forest became the economic resource through which the Spokane Indians maintained their tribal identity.
2.2 The Dawes Act Threat to the Spokane Homeland
While E. C. Watkins and O. O. Howard were negotiating the creation of the Spokane Indian Reservation, reformers were proposing legislation to "solve the Indian question" by breaking up the Indian reservations and dissolving tribal relations. The reformers conceived of reservations as a temporary expedient in the transformation of the Indians into farmers. Through education and agricultural training on reservations, they argued, Indians would be freed from the bondage of nomadism and corporate tribalism, made competent for American citizenship, and prepared for assimilation into the larger society as citizens.
By 1881, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Hiram Price had become convinced that a general program of allotment in severalty, the division of the Indian reservations into small, individually owned parcels, was the best method for implementing the Indians' transition to citizenship. The size of the proposed allotments varied depending on the agricultural conditions of a reservation, but the plan was based on the assumption that an Indian would receive adequate farm land to support a family. Once all of the Indians on a reservation had received their allotments, the unallotted reservation land could be sold or opened to non-Indian entry. "Let the laws that govern a white man govern the Indian," counseled Commissioner Price. "The Indian must be made to understand that if he expects to live and prosper in this country he must learn the English language, and learn to work ... The policy thus indicated will in a few years rid the government of this vexed 'Indian question,' making the Indian a blessing instead of a curse to himself and country."15
In spite of past experience that indicated that allotment had led to the rapid transfer of lands from Indians to non-Indians, proponents insisted that allotment in severalty offered Indians the only hope from further degradation and probable extinction.16 Reformers believed that allotment would transform Indian reservations into areas of small farms and the Indian owners into free and independent yeomen.17 Few Congressmen or Senators raised their voices against allotment, for its ideological justification was thoroughly congruent with American political and economic thought. Senator Henry Teller of Colorado attacked the underlying presuppositions of the program, arguing that individual ownership of the land was alien to the Indian way of thinking and that there was no good reason to force Indians to give up communal land tenure. "The Indians may be cultivators of the soil just as well and have the land in common," Teller reminded his colleagues. "They have always been so."18 Furthermore, Teller insisted, past experience indicated that allotment would not guarantee the Indians productive farms, but it did provide an easy method for non-Indians to gain possession of Indian land.19
Lawmakers ignored Teller's objections, and on February 8, 1887, Congress passed the General Allotment Act, commonly known as the Dawes Act. Under the terms of the Dawes Act each head of an Indian household would receive a quarter section of land. The United States would hold the land in trust for twenty-five years "for the sole use and benefit of the Indian to whom the allotment shall have been made." Acknowledging that some tribes were "more advanced in civilization" than others, Congress left the schedule of allotment to the discretion of the President.20
With the implementation of the Dawes Act, proponents of allotment envisioned the termination of the Indian reservations and the closure of the Indian Office. In his Annual Report in 1888 Commissioner J. D. C. Atkins clearly stated the purpose of the Dawes Act:
I fail to comprehend the full import of the Allotment Act if it was not the purpose of Congress which passed it and of the Executive whose signature made it a law ultimately to dissolve all tribal relations and to place each adult Indian upon the broad platform of American citizenship ... Agriculture and education will gradually do this work and finally enable the Government to leave the Indian to stand alone.21
The Dawes Act threatened to destroy the Spokane Tribe. The law was designed to undermine traditional tribal values and social structures and to place the individual Indian in a new relationship with the federal and state governments. Of equal importance, the Dawes Act threatened to remove reservation timber resources from tribal control. Since most of the Spokane timberlands, which covered two-thirds of the reservation, could not be cleared for agricultural use, they were not eligible for allotment. The Dawes Act anticipated that these unallotted lands would be sold to non-tribal interests. The Spokane Tribe would receive money for the land, but the Indians would profit little from the forest's long-term production.
The Commissioner of Indian Affairs did not believe that the Spokane Indians were ready for allotment in 1887. They had not all relocated to the Spokane Indian Reservation, and many Spokane had little or no farming experience. The Indian Office therefore delayed allotment at the Spokane Indian Reservation. Removal of all the Spokane to the reservation and allotment, however, could not be postponed indefinitely. The Spokane occupied valuable agricultural land outside of the reservation, and that land was coveted by white settlers. Through their elected representatives, settlers steadily increased pressure on the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to convince the Spokane to move to the reservation.
Completion of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1883 had inaugurated a rapid flow of land-hungry immigrants into the northwestern territories and heightened Indian-white tensions. Non-Indian settlers complained that the Indian reservations contained great tracts of lands that the Indians could not and would not use. They urged the federal government to reduce the size of those reservations. In the area around Spokane Falls, the Indians refused to move to reservations and continued to occupy and to assert their claims to non-reservation lands. In an effort to expedite the reduction of the reservations and to extinguish the Indian title to non-reservation lands, Congress created the Northwest Indian Commission on May 15, 1886. Congress instructed the Commission to negotiate additional land cessions from the tribes in Minnesota, Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Washington. In early March, 1887, the Commission met in council with the Upper and Middle Spokane, who had adamantly refused to move to a reservation and continued to occupy land around Spokane Falls.22
The commissioners were appalled at the conditions in which the non-reservation Spokane Indians were living. In observing the Indians across the territories, they had seen "none so utterly degraded and helpless and none which appeals more strongly to the pity and conscience of the humane and the helping hand of the Government than do these unfortunate and unhappy people." The land on which they had lived and which their ancestors once possessed, was being taken from them "without a dollar of compensation, without their consent, and in spite of their earnest yet impotent protest."23
The Commission's purpose was "to obtain a relinquishment from them [the Spokane] of all claim against the Government on account of lands thus taken from them, to pay them a fair consideration for such relinquishment, and to effect their removal and settlement upon one of the existing neighboring reservations."24 Initially the Upper and Middle Spokane resisted removal to an established reservation and insisted that land be set aside for them on the Little Spokane River. The commissioners reported that the Spokane's reluctance to leave their old haunts was an almost unanimous feeling.
They held councils among themselves, and they brought all their forces together in demanding that a separate reservation on the little Spokane River should be laid off for them, and that they be paid for the lands they had lost. So urgent were they in this demand, and so unanimous and stubborn in its assertion, that at one time we well nigh lost all hope of a successful issue of the negotiations.25
However, when the commissioners informed the Spokane that Congress had already decided against establishing an additional reservation, and that decision was confirmed by a telegram from Secretary of the Interior L. Q. C. Lamar, the Spokane agreed to relinquish their claims and to move to the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation. There they could take individual allotments under the terms of the Dawes Act. Those who had settled and made improvements near Spokane Falls would be allowed to remain on the land that they occupied and enter their claim under the laws of the United States relating to public lands. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs also agreed that if there were Spokane who wished to go to the Flathead or Colville reservations, they would be permitted to do so. They would also receive a pro rata share of the benefits agreed to by the Commission.26
The commissioners acknowledged that the Spokane had not been treated fairly in the past.
The cession covers a large territory of land to which these Indians had as good a title as that by which any other Indians hold their lands. They have never ceded any portion of it to the United States, nor had they ever received any compensation for it from any source. It is true that much of it is poor and not suitable for cultivation, yet much of it is rich in soil, in timber, and in minerals.27
The commissioners established no conditions under which the Upper and Middle Spokane could move to the Spokane Indian Reservation, but neither did they prohibit them from going there. Apparently, both the commissioners and the Indians considered the Spokane Indian Reservation to be inadequate to accommodate additional people.28 The commissioners agreed that the United States would expend the sum of $95,000 for the benefit of the Upper and Middle Spokane as follows:
For the first year, thirty thousand dollars; for the second year, twenty thousand dollars, and for each succeeding year thereafter for eight (8) years, five thousand dollars, said money to be expended under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior in the removal of the said Indians to the Coeur d'Alene Reservation, in erecting suitable houses, in assisting them in breaking lands, in furnishing them with cattle, seeds, and agricultural implements, saw and grist mills, thrashing-machines, mowers, clothing; provisions; in taking care of the old, sick, and infirm; in affording education facilities, and in any other manner tending to their civilization and self support.29
The Commission also promised that in addition to the monetary benefits, the Indian Office would employ a blacksmith and carpenter on the reservation to help in the construction of new homes and instruct the Spokane in those trades.
For five years the Upper and Middle Spokane received nothing. Not until 1892 did Congress ratify the 1887 agreement and appropriate funds to implement it.30 In the meantime — with no secure title to their property, no money, and few marketable skills — the bands around Spokane Falls became increasingly poverty-stricken and degraded.
In August, 1893, T. P. Smith, Montgomery Hardman, and Captain John W. Bubb arrived to assist the Upper and Middle Spokane in their move to the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation. The Spokane had indicated that they would like to remain together if they settled on a reservation and that they were opposed to allotment in severalty. In his telegram to the 1887 Spokane Falls Council, Secretary of the Interior Lamar had stated that "if land suitable and sufficient on one of the three reservations [Coeur d'Alene, Colville, Flathead] to which negotiations for their removal are restricted by law can be selected by them where they may be to themselves, with consent of Indians now occupying the reservation, it may be designated as their reservation in the agreement which you negotiate."31
Chief Seltice and the Coeur d'Alene refused to give their consent to the plan. Chief Seltice welcomed the Spokane to settle on the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation on individual allotments, but he would not allow them to settle as a separate tribe. As a result, nearly half the Upper and Middle Spokane joined the Lower Spokane on the Spokane Indian Reservation rather than take allotments in severalty on the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation.32 They believed they were not ready to compete in the white man's world, an outcome that they considered inevitable once they received their allotments. The Spokane Indians were also intent on maintaining their tribal identity.33
2.3 The Indian Forest and the Development of a Timber Industry in the Inland Empire
Prior to the movement of many Spokane to the reservation in the 1890s, those Indians living on the reservation initiated small commercial development of the forest. Colville Indian Agent John Simms reported in 1878 that the temporary military post at Spokane Falls furnished a market for the local Indians' surplus produce and that the Spokane living in the area "cut nearly all the wood used — from five to six hundred cords — for which they received one dollar and fifty cents per cord and much of it was hauled by them at one dollar per cord."34 A year later Simms indicated that the Indians were reluctant to work for the government, Mas they make better money working for white farmers and contractors cutting fuel."35 Simms reported that 5,500 cords had been cut on the Colville Agency (Colville, Spokane, and Coeur d'Alene Reservations) in 1880 and 1881. He did not indicate if any of the wood had been sold to non-Indians. Later, when the Upper and Middle Spokane moved to the Spokane Indian Reservation, they were isolated from the white settlers who had provided a market for cord wood.36
The Spokane's use of the forest resource was governed by the federal government's commitment to transforming the Indians into farmers. Although Indian agents at Minnesota and Wisconsin reservations had negotiated contracts for selling Indian timber in the 1870s, Congress generally prohibited commercial timber harvesting on Indian reservations. Congress and influential reformers viewed the forests as a barrier to agriculture and justified cutting timber exclusively for domestic use and as a means of clearing land for farms. In United States v. Cook (1873) the United States Supreme Court affirmed the agrarian bias in federal policy for managing Indian forests when it ruled:
If the lands in a state of nature are not in a condition for profitable use, they may be made so. If desired for the purposes of agriculture, they may be cleared of their timber to such an extent as may be reasonable under the circumstances. The timber taken off by the Indians in such clearing may be sold by them. But to justify any cutting of the timber, except for use upon the premises, as timber or its product, it must be done in good faith for the improvement of the land. The improvement must be the principal thing, and the cutting of the timber the incident only.37
In an effort to establish a legal means through which tribes could harvest their timber, Congress passed the "Dead and Down" Act in 1889. Through this act the President could authorize Indians residing on reservations "to fell, cut, remove, sell or otherwise dispose of the dead timber standing or fallen, on such reservation or allotment for the sole benefit of such Indian or Indians."38 The "Dead and Down" Act established the first and, until 1910, the only general policy for managing Indian forests.
The agrarian bias that permeated federal Indian policy worked against the creation of an effective general plan for managing the Indians' timber resources.39 After 1887 the forested land on several reservations was considered "surplus"; that is, it was not required to meet the needs of individual Indians in terms of the Dawes Act. Such timberland constituted a valuable resource to which the Indians had limited access. As a result of federal policy, the Spokane occupied a reservation with thousands of acres of forest that they were prohibited from harvesting.40
While federal courts prohibited the Spokane from harvesting their timber, timber companies commenced large-scale timber cutting on nearby forests. The construction of the Northern Pacific Railway from 1880 to 1883 initiated the rapid destruction of prime forests across the territories of Montana, Idaho, and Washington. The construction of the railroad created a great demand for ties, bridge timbers, lumber, and fuel. Initially, timber contractors stripped the hillsides along the mainline right-of-way.41 As the Northern Pacific built branch lines into adjacent valleys, industrial mining and smelting in the Butte, Montana area and the Coeur d'Alene Mountains of Idaho, intensified the demand for timber. By 1888, the Anaconda Copper Company at Butte was using 40,000 feet of timber a day in its mines, plus hundreds of thousands of cords to fuel its smelters.42 Soon after the Butte mining boom was well under way, prospectors in the Coeur d'Alene Mountains began opening leads of silver, lead, and gold. The largest operation, the Bunker Hill and Sullivan, was located in 1885, and by 1900 was the dominant economic interest in North Idaho.43 New rail lines laid to the mining centers used millions of board feet of timber. In addition to hauling ore, the railroads gave lumbermen access to thousands of acres of timber and facilities for transporting it efficiently.44
The railroads also brought settlers. Between 1890 and 1910, thousands of homesteaders settled the wheatlands of the northwestern plains. Inland Empire lumbermen expanded their operations to supply lumber for homes and towns as far away as eastern Montana and North Dakota. However, the market was primarily local, as the city of Spokane was growing rapidly. In 1900, 675 new structures were built. Between 1904 and 1909, from 1500 to 1900 new structures were built in Spokane each year.45
A log-cutting frenzy began immediately north of Spokane in 1902, when the Northern Pacific Railroad sold over 200,000 acres of its land grant to several lumber companies. Historian John Fahey describes the lumber industry around Spokane at that time as "combative, opportunistic, exploitive, rising and falling, booming and busting with large hopes and small realizations." By 1909, more than 300 mills were operating in eastern Washington and northern Idaho, drawing lumberjacks from the Great Lakes regions, where the forests had become seriously depleted. The industry was dominated by large timber companies that practiced integrated lumbering. They owned the land and timber, logging railroads, mills, and marketing facilities. According to Fahey, the large companies progressively absorbed the smaller ones, practicing growth by "feeding on competitors."46
The timber boom began to wane around 1910. The railroads were completed, immigration had slowed, construction around Spokane started to decline, and competition from the South for Midwest markets resulted in reduced lumber exports. In an effort to liquidate stumpage, lumber companies continued rapid timber cutting, creating large surpluses and driving prices down.47
FOOTNOTES
1 The Colville Agency was headquartered at Chewelah. The Spokane rejected pleas to join the Nez Perce in Idaho against the U.S. Army. The Spokane and Nez Perce had been friendly, but the Spokane insisted that the Nez Perce conflict was not their fight. A. J. Cain, "The Indians of the Upper Columbia — an exact and Impartial account of the Condition and situation — Necessity of Action in Regard to Them — A Plan Outlined," December 12, 1877, Secretary of War, "Annual Report, 1877-78" House Executive Document [HED] 1, 45th Cong., 2d sess., 1878, Vol. 1, pt. 2, Appendix A., serial 1794, pp. 639-641.
2 "Official Report of M. C. Wilkinson, First Lieutenant, Third Infantry, Aide-de-Camp, made in accordance with Special Orders 167" (November 5, 1877), in Sec. of War, "Annual Report, 1877-78." Appendix E, pp. 642-44.
3 O. O. Howard, "Personal Visits," Sec. of War, "Annual Report 1880," HED 1, 46th Cong., 3d sess., 1880, Pt. 2, serial 1959, pp. 191-192.
4 Sec. of War, "Annual Report, 1877-1878," p. 644.
5 18 Stat., 420, March 3, 1875. Under the terms of the Indian Homestead Act passed in 1875, Congress provided that all the benefits of the Homestead Law should apply to the Indians, without their losing any share in tribal funds. There was, however, confusion among the Indians and the agents regarding the citizenship status of Indians who entered homesteads on the public domain. Colville Agent John Simms wrote in 1880, "The chief objection to Indians availing themselves to the homestead act arises from their disinclination to sever their tribal relations, and from their inability or unwillingness to pay the commissions and fees necessary to secure their land." Commissioner of Indian Affairs [CIA], "Annual Report, 1880," HED 1, pt. 5, 46th Cong., 3d sess. 1880, serial 1959, p. 275; Roy Robbins, Our Landed Heritage (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1942), pp. 280-281.
6 "Official Report of M. C. Wilkinson," p. 645. When Inspector Watkins told O-ei-else, a Palouse, that the Palouse would have to go to a reservation, O-ei-else indicated that he would join the Lower Spokane. The Colvilles, who had already secured a reservation, asked for and received an additional six-mile-wide strip of land along the east side of the Columbia River from the Canadian border to the proposed Spokane Reservation. However, when Congress ratified the agreement, the strip was not included within the Colville Indian Reservation.
7 E. C. Watkins to O. O. Howard, August 18, 1877, Sec. of War, "Annual Report, 1877-78," p. 642.
8 Ibid.
9 "Authorizing the Lower Spokane and Lower Pend d'Oreille Tribes of Indians to Present their Claims to the Court of Claims," House Report [H. Rpt.] 958, 70th Cong., 1st sess., 1928, serial 8836, p. 7.
10 Ruby and Brown, The Spokane Indians: Children of the Sun, pp. 175-76; John A. Simms to CIA, August 18, 1880, "Letters Sent-CIA, 1880-1881," Colville, Box 35a, BIA, RG 75, NA - Seattle [NA-Seattle].
11 Executive Order, January 18, 1881, Charles Kappler, Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, (Washington: GPO, 1904), Vol. I, p. 925.
12 Sidney D. Waters to John D. Atkins, July 31, 1885, "Letters Sent to CIA, 1882-1885," Colville, Box 35a, BIA, RG 75, NA — Seattle.
13 John A. Simms, "Annual Report to CIA," August 18, 1880, "Letters Sent to CIA, 1880-1881," Colville. Box 35a, B1A, RG 75, NA - Seattle.
14 "Reduction of Indian Reservations" HED 63, 50th Cong., 1st sess.. 1888, serial 2557, p. 7.
15 CIA, "Annual Report, 1881," HED 1, 47th Cong., 1st sess., 1881, serial 2018, p. 3. For a discussion of individualization of the Indian and the allotment policy see Robert M. Utley, The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), pp. 211-212; Francis Paul Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976), pp. 152-154; Congressional Record, 46th Cong., 3d sess., 1881, pp. 778-788, 904-913; Paul W. Gates, "Indian Allotments Preceding the Dawes Act," in John G. Clark, ed.. The Frontier Challenge: Responses to the Trans-Mississippi West (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1971), pp. 141-170.
16 Brian W. Dippie, The Vanishing Americans: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy (Middletown: Wesleyan University, 1982). Dippie argues that federal Indian Policy in the late nineteenth century was based on the assumption that reservations were temporary and that the Indians would no longer be identifiable as a distinct group after a generation or two.
17 Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land (Cambridge: Harvard, 1950), Chapter 12. Virgin Land is the classic account of the yeoman and the agrarian myth. The transformation of the Indian through allotment is the same type of transformation apologists claimed the Homestead Act created for the poverty-stricken workers of the cities and immigrants from the Old World. Congressional Record. 49th Cong., 2d sess., 1887, pp. 933-943. Many of the allotments on the Spokane Indian Reservation would be timber allotments, valuable for the timber production from them. However. Congress initially intended that only agricultural land or timberland that could be cleared for agriculture would be allotted.
18 Congressional Record, 46th Cong., 3d sess., 1881, pp. 778-788.
19 Ibid.
20 24 Stat., 388-391, February 9, 1887.
21 CIA, "Annual Report, 1888," HED 1, 50th Cong., 2d sess., 1888, serial 2637, pp. viii-ix.
22 "Reduction of Indian Reservations," p. 30.
23 Ibid., p. 31.
24 Ibid., pp. 7-8.
25 Ibid., p. 33.
26 Ibid., pp. 8, 52.
27 Ibid., p. 33.
28 Ibid., p. 65. During the Coeur d'Alene negotiations, Elijah, a Spokane, asked Agent Waters if Lot's reservation [the Spokane] was as good as the Coeur d'Alene. Waters replied. "No; no part of it can compare with it."
29 Ibid., p. 52.
30 Stat.. 139.
31 "Reduction of Indian Reservations," p. 33.
32 Ruby and Brown, Spokane Indians, pp. 205-206.
33 Prior to 1892 Upper and Middle Spokane had gone to the Spokane Reservation believing it to be part of the Colville Reservation, where they were allowed to go by the 1887 agreement. In this they were mistaken. To clear up the issue Congress enacted legislation on August 15, 1894 (28 Stat., 300), extending benefits to those who moved to the Spokane as well as to the Coeur d'Alene and Flathead reservations.
34 John A. Simms to E. A. Hoyt (CIA), July 28, 1878, "Letters Sent. 1878-79," Colville. Box 35a, BIA. RG 75, NA — Seattle.
35 Simms to E. A. Hoyt, July 7, 1879, Letterbook, Nov. 1, 1875-Jan. 1, 1879, pp. 48-49, Colville, Box 35a. BIA, RG 75, NA - Seattle.
36 CIA. "Annual Report, 1881," HED 1, 47th Cong., 1st sess, 1881, serial 2018, p. 217.
37 United States v. Cook, 86 U.S. 591. Reprinted in Alan S. Newell, Richmond L. Clow, and Richard N. Ellis, A Forest in Trust: Three-Quarters of a Century of Indian Forestry, 1910-1986 (Missoula: Historical Research Associates, 1986), Appendix D, item 18.
38 25 Stat., 673, February 16, 1889.
39 The agrarian bias strongly influenced federal land policy in general, for most Americans envisioned the United States as an agricultural nation and believed that farming made a special contribution to the moral and economic life of the country. See Smith, Virgin Land, chapters 12, 15.
40 Henry B. Steer, "The Indian Forests," in "A National Plan for American Forestry," Senate Document [S. Doc] 12, 75th Cong., 1st sess., 1933, serial 9740, Vol. 1, pp. 608-609; Newell, et al., A Forest in Trust, pp. 1-27, 1-30; R. V. Belt to Secretary of the Interior, December 28, 1891, Senate Executive Document 16, 52d Cong., 1 sess., 1892, serial 2892, pp. 2-3. The Dawes Act does not employ the term "surplus," but mentions only "non-allotted" lands. However, the Spokane Allotment Act of 1908 identifies unallotted lands as "surplus agricultural and timber lands" (35. Stat., 458). Timberlands were not to be allotted unless they could be cleared for agriculture, an unlikely prospect on the rocky hillsides of the Spokane Indian Reservation. Once allotment was completed the surplus land could be purchased by the United States.
In 1890, Congress took an additional step in Indian timber management when it passed legislation authorizing the Menominee of Wisconsin to log both dead and mature living timber on their reservation and drew up a plan establishing the cutting procedure (26 Stat., 146). Through the "Menominee Plan" the Indians cut and banked the timber themselves, then sold the logs. By selling logs rather than standing timber it was hoped the Menominee would retain more of the income from their timber and provide work for tribal members. The "Menominee Plan" provided a model through which a general Indian timber policy could be developed. However, during the ensuing years Congress continued to deal with Indian timber on a reservation by reservation basis rather than developing a general timber management policy for Indian forests.
41 18 Stat., 482-483, March 3, 1875. The Right-of-Way Act of March 3, 1875. allowed the railroads to cut timber along the right-of-way through the public domain for immediate construction purposes. However, a right-of-way through an Indian Reservation could only be gained by treaty or an act of Congress. Additional cutting of timber was to be delayed until the land survey had been completed and the odd and even sections defined.
42 K. Ross Toole and Edward Butcher, "Timber Depredations on the Montana Public Domain, 1885-1918," Journal of the West. 8:3 (July 1968), p. 353.
43 D. E. Livingston-Little, An Economic History of North Idaho, 1800-1900 (Los Angeles: Journal of the West, 1965), chapter 6.
44 Ibid., p. 79.
45 John Fahey, The Inland Empire: Unfolding Years, 1879-1929 (Seattle: University of Washington, 1986), p. 201.
46 Ibid., pp. 188, 194.
47 Ibid., p. 201.
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