Snake

Spokane Story

Spokane Story

“Spokane Story: A Colorful Early History of the Capital City of the Inland Empire” by Lucile Foster Fargo offers readers an evocative journey through the formative years of Spokane, Washington. Published in 1957 by Northwestern Press in Minneapolis, this work seeks to straddle the realms of history and storytelling, presenting a narrative that is neither entirely factual history nor pure fiction. Fargo accepts the challenging task of depicting Spokane’s cultural and developmental evolution from its fur trade beginnings to its emergence as a municipal entity in the early twentieth century.

Kit Carson, His Life and Adventures – Indian Wars

kitcarson

The subject of this sketch, Christopher “Kit” Carson, was born on the 24th of December, 1809, in Madison County, Kentucky. The following year his parents removed to Howard County, Missouri, then a vast prairie tract and still further away from the old settlements.

Legend of the Separation of the Comanche and Ute Tribes

The large spring referred to by Dr. James, Sage, Fremont, Ruxton, and the other writers whom I have quoted, is the one now enclosed and used by the bottling works at Manitou. Ruxton says the two springs were intimately connected with the separation of the Comanche and the Snake, or Ute tribes, and he gives the following legend concerning the beginning of the trouble: Many hundreds of winters ago, when the cottonwoods on the Big River were no higher than an arrow, and the red men, who hunted the buffalo on the plains, all spoke the same language, and the … Read more

The Indians of Idaho Nez Percé and Shoshone Uprisings

Some notice of the original inhabitants of Idaho is due the reader of this book, even though that notice must necessarily be short and its data largely traditional. With-out a written language of any kind, unless it was the use of the rudest and most barbarous symbols, they have passed away and left no recorded history; without architecture, except that which exhausts its genius in the construction of a skin wigwam or a bark lodge, they have died and left no monuments. Traditions concerning them are too confused, contradictory and uncertain to satisfy any who desire reliable history. Any real … Read more

Treaty of August 12, 1865

Articles of agreement and convention made and concluded at Sprague River Valley, on this twelfth day of August, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five, by J. W. Perit Huntington, super-intendent of Indian affairs in Oregon, on the part of the United States, and the undersigned chiefs and head-men of the Woll-pah-pe tribe of Snake Indians, acting in behalf of said tribe, being duly authorized so to do. Article I.Peace is declared henceforth between the United States and the Woll-pah-pe tribe of Snake Indians, and also between said tribe and all other tribes in amity with the United … Read more

Treaty of October 14, 1864

Articles of agreement and convention made and concluded at Klamath Lake, Oregon, on the fourteenth day of October, A. D. one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, by J. W. Perit Huntington, superintendent of Indian affairs in Oregon, and William Logan, United States Indian agent for Oregon, on the part of the United States, and the chiefs and head-men of the Klamath and Moadoc tribes, and Yahooskin band of Snake Indians, hereinafter named, to wit, La-Lake, Chil-o-que-nas, Kellogue, Mo-ghen-kas-kit, Blow, Le-lu, Palmer, Jack, Que-as, Poo-sak-sult, Che-mult, No-ak-sum, Mooch-kat-allick, Toon-tuck-tee, Boos-ki-you, Ski-a-tic, Shol-las-loos, Ta-tet-pas, Muk-has, Herman-koos-mam, chiefs and head-men of the Klamaths; … Read more

Snake Tribe

Snake Indians. A name applied to many different bodies of Shoshonean Indians but most persistently to those of eastern Oregon, to which the following synonyms refer.  These Indians form one dialectic group with the Paviotso of west Nevada and the Mono of south east California.  The principal Snake tribes were on the Walpapi and Yahuskin.

Blackfeet Tribe in War

The Blackfeet were a warlike people. How it may have been in the old days, before the coming of the white men, we do not know. Very likely, in early times, they were usually at peace with neighboring tribes, or, if quarrels took place, battles were fought, and men killed, this was only in angry dispute over what each party considered its rights. Their wars were probably not general, nor could they have been very bloody. When, however, horses came into the possession of the Indians, all this must have soon become changed. Hitherto there had really been no incentive … Read more

Blackfoot Tribe, Past and Present

Fifty years ago the name Blackfoot was one of terrible meaning to the white traveler who passed across that desolate buffalo-trodden waste which lay to the north of the Yellowstone River and east of the Rocky Mountains. This was the Blackfoot land, the undisputed home of a people which is said to have numbered in one of its tribes the Pi-k[)u]n’-i 8000 lodges, or 40,000 persons. Besides these, there were the Blackfeet and the Bloods, three tribes of one nation, speaking the same language, having the same customs, and holding the same religious faith. But this land had not always … Read more

Condition of the Idaho Indians in 1890

U.S. Indian Agent and Party on Fort Hall Reservation

Early the summer of 1877 troubles arose in regard to the occupancy of the Wallowa valley by white settlers, it having been withdrawn in 1875 as a reservation under treaty of 1873, because of the failure, of the Indians to permanently occupy it. An Indian belonging to a band of non-treaty Indians under Chief Joseph was killed by some settlers; then the Indians insisted upon the removal of the settlers and the restitution of the valley to them. Upon the refusal of the government to do this, and after further efforts to compel all the non-treaty Indians to come into … Read more

Shoshone or Snake Indians

Shonshone Implements - Plate 76

The various tribes and bands of Indians of the Rocky Mountains, south of latitude 43°, who are known under this general name, occupy the elevated area of the Utah basin. They embrace all the territory of the Great South Pass between the Mississippi Valley and the waters of the Columbia, by which the land or caravan communication with Oregon and California is now, and is destined hereafter to be, maintained. Traces of them, in this latitude, are first found in ascending the Sweetwater River of the north fork of the Platte, or Nebraska. They spread over the sources of the … Read more

Washington Indian Wars, 1855-1856

Map of the Attack on Seattle

The reader of Oregon history will remember that mention is made of the massacre of the Ward train by the Snake Indians near Fort Boise in the autumn of 1854. Major Granville O. Haller, stationed at Fort Dalles, made a hasty expedition into the Snake country, intended to show the Indians that the government would not remain inactive while its citizens were subjected to these outrages. The march served no other purpose than to give this notice, for the guilty Indians had retired into their mountain fastnesses, and the season being late for re-crossing the Blue Mountains, Haller returned to … Read more