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A Short History of the Spokane Indians
The Spokanes (Spokans) maintain that their name originated when
a native beat on a hollow tree inside of which a serpent made a
noise that sounded like "Spukcane." One day, they say, as their
chief pondered the noise, vibrations radiated from his head,
which gave the word the vague meaning "power from the brain." In
early times the Spokanes called themselves the Spukanees, which
is translated "sun peoples," or more freely, "children of the
sun." Others maintain that the tribal name derived from that of
one of their chiefs and from nothing else.
The tribe lived on
in the general area of the Spokane River in three primary bands:
the Upper Spokanes, whose general area extended from Spokane
Falls east to around the present-day Washington-Idaho border;
the Middle Spokanes, who were west of Spokane Falls in the
vicinity of the Little Spokane River; and the Lower Spokanes,
whose territory was farther west as far as the confluence of the
Columbia and Spokane rivers. A city and county are but two of
the many things bearing the Spokane name.
Although they
comprised three groups, the Spokane peoples coalesced during
times of emergency. No native people of the Pacific Northwest
had stronger family ties than the Spokanes did. Their
successors are known officially today as the Spokane Tribe of
the Spokane Reservation, Washington.
Location:
Among the various locations where Spokane Indians may
be found are the 133,344-acre Spokane Reservation, established
by executive order on January 18, 1881, northwest of the city of
Spokane (on which live the greatest number of the tribe); other
reservations, such as the Flathead (formerly the Jocko) and the
Coeur D'Alene; and off-reservation locations, among which the
city of Spokane is important.
Numbers:
The Spokane Reservation tribal membership was 1,961 in
1985. Authorities disagree in their estimates of the Spokane
population in the immediate precontact period. Their estimates
vary from 1,400 to 2,500. A Hudson's Bay Company trader
reported their number at 704 in 1827. A United States census in
1910 placed them at 643.
History:
The Spokanes generally lived at peace with their
Interior Salish neighbors, but were known to fight them at
times. Conflicts were usually of short duration, lasting only
until grievances were settled. With the acquisition of horses
in the eighteenth century, the Spokanes, especially the Upper
Spokanes, joined the Flatheads, the Kalispels, the Nez Perces,
and other tribesmen in trading and buffalo-hunting expeditions
across the Rocky Mountains on the Great Plains. The Spokanes'
association with the Kalispels was so close that in the middle
of the nineteenth century a government official stated that the
Kalispels were an amalgam of Kalispels, Spokanes, and Flatheads.
Occasionally conflicts erupted between the tribes from west of
the Rocky Mountains and the Blackfeet and other Plains tribes,
who regarded the former as poachers on their lands.
The Spokanes made their first major entry into the white man's
fur-trading complex in 1810 with the establishment of the North
West Company's Spokane House, which a was followed the next year
by the rival Pacific Fur Company's Fort Spokane. After the
failure of the Pacific Fur Company and the merger of the North
West and Hudson's Bay companies in 1821, the Spokanes had a
trading post in their lands until 1826, when the post was
removed north to Fort Colville. The Spokane tribe's first major
confrontation with Christianity came around 1830 with the return
of Spokane Garry (later Chief Garry) to his people, from an
Anglican mission school at Red River (later Winnipeg). Between
1838 and 1848, missionaries, the Reverends Elkanah Walker
and Cushing Eells were active among the Spokanes, having been
sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The presence also of Roman Catholic missionaries,
including Rev. Pierre De Smet, S.J., and his successors, further
widened the divisions among the Spokane peoples.
The Spokanes became involved in wars with whites by joining the
Coeur d'Alenes and other Salish speakers, along with the
Shahaptian-speaking Palouses, in fighting American troops under
Maj. Edward Steptoe in May and Col. George Wright in September,
1858. The defeat of those tribesmen in two key fights with
Wright's troops opened the interior of the Pacific Northwest to
American settlement. Despite pleas by the younger Chief Joseph
that the Spokanes enter the Nez Perce War of 1877 against the
United States, the Spokanes remained neutral, like their Coeur
d'Alene neighbors.
There were two major agreements between the Spokanes and the
federal government. On August 18, 1877, the Lower Spokanes
agreed to move by November 1, 1877, to a tract of land that was
established as the Spokane Reservation by executive order on
January 18,1881. Then on March 18,1887, the Upper and Middle
Spokanes agreed to remove to one of the following reservations:
the Colville, the Flathead, or the Coeur d'Alene. That
agreement was ratified July 13, 1892, and Congress later
extended its benefits to the many Upper and Middle Spokanes who
had removed to the Spokane Reservation. In 1897 there were 145
Spokanes on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation and 91 on the
Flathead. In the meantime, trouble had broken out between the
white citizenry of the rapidly growing city of Spokane and its
Indians who had not removed to reservations. Several Spokanes,
including Chief Garry, were involved with whites in wrangles
over land titles.
Among various acts pertaining to the Spokane Reservation was a
joint congressional resolution of June 19, 1902, providing that
the secretary of the interior make allotments in severalty to
Indians. In 1906 a total of 651 members of the Spokane tribe
were allotted 64,750 acres. Among subsequent acts was that
authorizing the secretary of the interior to sell surplus
unallotted and agricultural reservation lands.
In its earlier period the Spokane Reservation retained its
primarily Protestant orientation. After the removal there of
Chief Enoch and his Catholic followers in 1896, the religious
picture altered greatly; of an estimated 600 reservation
inhabitants, about half were of the Catholic faith. Helping
Spokanes to adjust to the white men's ways was Chief Lot, who
favored white teachers for reservation children. After Fort
Spokane, at the confluence of the Columbia and Spokane rivers,
was abandoned in 1898 by the military, a government boarding
school was established there. In the early twentieth century,
when the reservation was under the Colville Agency, its chief
executive, Capt. John McA. Webster, worked diligently on
behalf of the Spokanes to prepare their entry into the modern
world. Ironically, many of the technical advances that he
sought for them benefited the white community. Traditionalism
remained strong among the Spokanes. The termination movement of
the 1950s never gained much support among them. A 1961 study of
Spokane assimilation patterns indicated that there was closer
assimilation with white culture in the later nineteenth century
than there was a half century later.
Government and Claims:
After the passage of the Indian
Reorganization Act in 1934 (48 Stat. 984), it was not until May
12, 1951, that the Spokane Tribe of the Spokane Reservation,
Washington, approved its formal organization by a vote of 95 to
34. Its constitution and bylaws were approved by the
commissioner of Indian affairs on June 2 7, 1951.
On August 10, 1951, the tribe filed a petition with two claims
(Docket 331) with the Indian Claims Commission. One claim
alleged that the cession of the tribe's land to the United
States under the agreement of March 18, 1887 (27 Stat. 120, 139;
ratified July 13, 1892) had been for an unconscionably small
consideration. A second, separate claim, filed by amended
petitions for accounting purposes became Docket 331-A. The
tribe alleged that the United States, which, as the tribe's
guardian and trustee, held certain of its monies and properties
in trust, had failed to account for their management, handling,
and disposition. On February 3, 1969, the tribe and the United
States filed a joint motion with the Indian Claims Commission,
requesting that the two dockets (331 and 331-A) be consolidated.
The commission approved a settlement of $6.7 million for both
dockets. The final judgment was rendered on February 21, 1967,
after the tribe in December, 1966, had voted 155 to 3 to accept
the compromise offer. About half the monies received were
distributed to the approximately 1,600 tribal members, with
shares for minors placed in trust. The other half of the monies
was spent for various tribal programs, such as land acquisition,
scholarships, resource development, credit, and financing.
Later the Spokanes filed claims (Dockets 523-71 and 52471) that
were transferred to the Court of Claims, for mismanagement of
the Indian Claims Commission judgment funds and for other funds,
such as Individual Indian Money accounts held in trust by the
United States. The tribe in 1981 was awarded $271,431.23.
Contemporary Life and Culture:
The tribe, as well as some
individual Spokanes, has benefited from sales of the uranium ore
that was discovered on the reservation in 1954. When the
Midnight Mine from which the ore came became exhausted, its
operator, the Dawn Mining Company, began processing low-grade
ore. Another mine, the Sherwood, which is completely on tribal
land, has been operated since 1966 by Western Nuclear. It too
processes low-grade ore. From its operations the tribe
receives a small dividend. The tribe has investigated the
possibility of establishing a nuclear plant. A wood-veneer
plant near the town of Ford on the eastern edge of the
reservation was closed down in 1979. Spokanes on the
reservation also engage in logging, stock raising, and farming.
After a projected fruit-raising project failed to materialize,
the tribe maintained that previous agreements for the
construction of Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia (completed,
1940) had provided for rehabilitation of Spokane lands. Thus
the tribe was able to water 2,000 acres by a $6 million
irrigation system for production of crops. The lands are on
benches along the Spokane River on the southern edge of the
reservation.
Like other tribes, the Spokanes have been involved in conflicts
with state and federal agencies over jurisdictions on the
reservation. They seek compensation for the water stored behind
Grand Coulee Dam and other dams on the Spokane River. From
Little Falls Dam on the Spokane they also seek a percentage of
the revenues from power production. The tribe won its fight for
the waters of Chamokane Creek on the eastern edge of the
reservation when the state of Washington was forbidden to
approve the tapping of new wells in the aquifer of that creek.
Initially the Spokane Agency was a sub-agency under the
Colville Agency and was located at Chewelah. In 1887 it was
moved to the Spokane Reservation, which is across the Spokane
River from Fort Spokane. In 1902 the sub-agency moved to Fort
Spokane across the river into abandoned buildings next to the
boarding school. In 1912 the Spokane Sub-agency became a full
agency. At that time it moved to the city of Spokane, but in
the same year was returned to the old agency grounds on the
Spokane Reservation. Because its facilities were rundown, the
agency returned in November, 1913, to Spokane, where it remained
until 1915, when it was moved to Wellpinit on the Spokane
Reservation. In 1925 the agency was reduced once more to the
status of a sub-agency under the Colville Agency until 1970 the
Spokanes again had their own agency at Wellpinit. In 1973 the
administration of the Kalispel Reservation, formerly under the
Northern Idaho Agency at Lapwai, was transferred to the Spokane
Agency.
With re-establishment of the Spokane Agency on the Spokane
Reservation in 1970, health facilities were greatly expanded.
Alcohol and drug-abuse programs were put in operation. Under
BIA funding the tribe sponsored a summer work-experience program
for its youth, who made trails and did cleanup work on the
reservation. Under BIA control an Indian Action program trained
tribal members in carpentry, heavy-equipment operation,
electrical installation, clerical work, and other fields. On
the reservation there have been Roman Catholic, Presbyterian,
and Assemblies of God churches, which attempt to harmonize as
much as possible the Christian faith with native traditions and
ceremonials, such as root festivals. Among the classes offered
in the Wellpinit school was a class on the Spokane language.
The schools in the city of Spokane, which has a sizable Indian
population, conducted classes which included Indian culture.
The Alex Sherwood Memorial Center, dedicated June 7, 1975,
fosters Spokane Indian culture. It is a large two-story stone
structure housing tribal offices, a short-order food service, a
library, and a museum. In 1979 a longhouse was dedicated near
Wellpinit.
Noted historically for their conservatism, the Spokanes in the
1960s and 1970s opposed termination of their reservation and of
their relationship with the federal government. In 1973, when
militants of the American Indian Movement came on the
reservation, they made little headway with its Indians.
As part of a land purchase program the tribe in August, 1982,
purchased from heirs of an allottee a quarter section of land
near Colville, Washington, for commercial development. Held in
trust for the tribe, it is known as the Chewelah Homestead
Allotment.
Special Events:
During a weekend in mid-May the Smoo-kee-shin
Powwow, featuring Indian games and war-dance contests, is held
at the Community Center in Spokane. Near mid-June the
Reservation Day Celebration is held at Wellpinit. In early
August a WRA-approved rodeo is held at Wellpinit. On Labor Day
weekend the Spokane Indian Days Celebration, featuring games,
dances, and exhibits, is held at Wellpinit.
Suggested Readings:
Clifford M. Drury,
Nine Years With the Spokane Indians: The Diary, 1838-1848, of Elkanah Walker
(Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clarke Co., 1976)
Prodipto Roy and Della M. Walker,
Assimilation of the Spokane Indians"
, Washington Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin no. 628
(Pullman: Washington State University, Institute of Agricultural Science,
1961)
Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown,
The Spokane Indians: Children of the Sun
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,1970)
David C. Wynecoop,
Children of the Sun: A History of the Spokane Indians
(Wellpinit, Wash.: David C. Wynecoop, 1969).
Last Updated
December 21, 2004
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