The 2005 Anniversary that Matters

In all the hoopla over the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition--an expedition that survived only because it was rescued repeatedly by one Indian tribe after another, especially here in Cascadia--there’s so far been a deafening silence over another anniversary that’s upon us.

Arguably, this second anniversary is of events that have had a larger influence on the course of history in the Pacific Northwest than even Lewis and Clark's journey. Other white explorers would have come along sooner or later. And European (as compared with American) power was already waning in the Pacific when Lewis and Clark made their way from Indian camp to Indian camp across the Rockies and down the Columbia to the ocean.

The neglected anniversary is the 150th—the sesquicentennial—of the Treaties of 1855. These treaties, which constitute the bulk of all treaties ever signed between the United States and Northwest tribes, continue to shape the management of land, water, wildlife, and fisheries in huge areas of Cascadia. Their example has also helped inform the treaty-making that has commenced in earnest in British Columbia only in the past fifteen years.

The silence is perhaps not surprising. The Treaties of 1855, while they remain the governing documents of tribal-US relations in the region, are not—like Lewis & Clark—proud examples of ingenuity, democracy, peacefulness, and scientific exploration.

The 1855 Treaties are shameful instances of white disingenuousness, racial oppression, and violence. They are not only the culmination of a history of fraud, coercion, lies, and thievery, but the beginning of more of the same.

The outlines of this narrative are now familiar, but the details are worth knowing. The story of the 1855 Treaties has been well documented since at least 1965, when historian Alvin Josephy, Jr. published his masterful, 700-page The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest.

The key actor in all these treaties was Isaac I. Stevens, the ambitious and hard-driving young officer who served as first territorial governor of Washington. (He's profiled at HistoryLink.) Right now, in early January, we’re at the 150th anniversary of the Puget Sound treaties. Here’s how Josephy describes the process by which Stevens created these treaties:

“In six weeks, during January and February, [Stevens] swept through the Puget Sound region, gathering the tribes, presenting them with hurriedly prepared treaties, and getting the headmen to sign. His pace was breathless, and although he had the terms read to the Indians, he gave them little time to understand or consider their meanings. When they balked at signing, Stevens cajoled them and made lavish, high-sounding promises to them. When they still objected, he became impatient and threatening. He played on the fears of the most timorous of the headmen, and after frightening them into signing, he dragooned the others by making them feel that the majority of their people would no longer look to them for leadership. In at least one instance he was accused later of having forged the “X” mark of a chief who had refused to sign.

“By four separate treaties, embracing all the individual bands and tribes in the region, he permanently extinguished the Indian title to almost the entire Puget Sound Basin in Washington Territory. The agreements, secured in large measure by coercion and fraud, defined a number of small reservations and imposed various terms on the Indians. In return for annuities and, in some cases, permission to continue to fish, hunt, and gather roots and berries on lands off the reservations which white men had not yet claimed, he wrung from the bands their promise to move to their new homes and stay there, to cease violence against whites, and to submit all their grievances to the government ‘for settlement.’ To make it possible to confine the Indians on an even fewer number of reservations in the future, or to remove them entirely from the region, the treaties also gave the government the right to move the Indians to other reservations at any time ‘when the interests of the Territory require it.’”

From Puget Sound, Stevens moved east, using the same techniques and worse, including bribery and imprisonment of leaders. When bands weren’t represented at treaty councils, Stevens sometimes simply designated chiefs on paper from among those present, without ever telling those present he had done so. As the year progressed, Stevens wrote these unilateral pseudo-treaties for the mighty Nez Perce and Columbia River tribes such as the Yakama and Cayuse (in May); Montana tribes such as the Flathead and Pend d’Oreille (in July) and Blackfeet (in October). His agents, meanwhile, did the same in central Oregon, and early in 1856, Stevens finished the job with treaties in southwest Washington.

Not yet ratified in Washington, DC, and never implemented as written, the 1855 Treaties were not actually in effect for several years--a point that Stevens made abundantly clear to the Indians but rarely mentioned to his white audiences. Indeed, Stevens trumpeted to the white press that he had opened the Northwest to settlers, prospectors, and ranchers. The predictable resulting influx of whites led inevitably to conflict and, on the rare occasions when Indians used force to defend what were still their lands and waters, Stevens and his successors sent troops to intervene. Other whites used the pretext of these so-called treaty violations to justify further encroachment on reserved lands. The saga continued for decades.

The 1855 Treaties are as significant today as ever. In much of the Northwest, management of natural resources is a process than involves, by law, the interests of treaty tribes. This arrangement is not unique to Cascadia, but it is unusual. Consider the Boldt decision and the resulting Indian co-management of western Washington salmon fisheries. Or the related legal decisions that recognize Columbia River tribes’ standing on management of fisheries. Or consider the water-rights agreement now close to completion that will finally respect the rights of the Nez Perce in Idaho, as the Idaho Statesman reported recently.

We’ll say more about the modern importance of the 1855 Treaties as 2005 proceeds, but for now, let me close with a smaller point. The stories we tell about ourselves shape our self-conception, and our self-conception shapes our actions. So it’s disappointing that 150 years later, Isaac I. Stevens is still honored by having named for him (at least) an elementary school in Seattle (I attended it as a child); a middle school in Pasco, Washington; a Washington county; and a city and school district (pdf) north of Seattle (Lake Stevens).

But as far as I can tell, among the Indian leaders who were the true diplomats of the period—men who actually kept their word—only one has the honor of a public school in his name: Kamiakin of the Yakama. (He has three schools named for him: here and here and here). I can’t find any public institutions named for Looking Glass (pictured) of the Nez Perce or Peopeo Moxmox of the Walla Walla, two figures in Cascadia’s past who played key roles in 1855 and are arguably as important as such revered northwesterners as Chief Joseph and Simon Fraser.

Here's hoping that media outlets around Cascadia begin to devote appropriate resources to the 150th anniversary of the Treaties of 1855.

P.S. I’m not trying to belittle the Lewis and Clark Expedition; it’s a fascinating episode and has awesome myth-making power. My favorite example is that, at the western end of the transcontinental journey, as the late Stephen Ambrose pointed out in his best-selling history Undaunted Courage, the Captains Lewis and Clark took and abided by a vote of the entire party to determine where they would spend the winter. They instructed that every member of the party should vote, including York, Clark’s African-American slave, and Sacagawea, the Shoshone woman who was married to a member of the party. So Cascadia was home to perhaps the first ever election that included all adults. They were more than a century ahead of their time. (Oh, and let the record show that Sacagawea, who has risen in the pantheon of American legends and now adorns a coin of her own, was both a Cascadian from Idaho and—horrors!—a teenage mother.)

UPDATE: I edited this lightly and corrected a few typos at 10:48 a.m.