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Cultures Clash: The Land Grab

There are white men living in my country. Some can stay forever and some must go. . . People who raise hogs in my country must go with their hogs, because they kill out the young camas, and to kill that is to starve us. It is our bread and we cannot eat earth. . . We must fish and hunt and our squaws must dig camas and other roots, and when you touch us on any of these points, then we carry our rifles on the right and left of us. Chief Moses, letter to the Editor, Daily Intelligencer, May 20, 1879.

Columbia women on horseback. Photo courtesy of Special Collections Division, University of Washington Libraries, Dr. E.H. Latham, Negative # NA1043.

By the time that a quest for land in Oregon and later Washington Territory brought American settlers through the Columbia Basin, the ravages of disease had reduced the Columbia-Sinkiuse population to about three hundred.

Washington Territorial Governor and Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Isaac Stevens, accelerated negotiations for land with Indians of the territory. As a result, the Yakima Treaty of 1855 assigned the Columbia-Sinkiuse to the new Yakima Reservation by virtue of their designation as part of the "confederated tribes and bands of Indians…who for the purposes of this treaty are to be considered as one nation, under the name of 'Yakama,' with Kamaiakun as its head chief, on behalf of and acting for said tribes and bands, and being duly authorized thereto by them."

 
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