SMOHALLA
I have only one heart. Although you say, Go to another country, my heart is not that way. I do not want money for my land. I am here, and here is where I am going to be. I will not part with lands, and if you come again I will say the same thing. I will not part with my lands.—Umatilla Chief.
We have never made any trade. The earth is part of my body, and I never gave up the earth. So long as the earth keeps me I want to be let alone.—Toohulhulsote.
Their only troubles arise from the attempts of white men to encroach upon the reservations. I verily believe that were the snow-crowned summits of Mount Rainier set apart as an Indian reservation, white men would immediately commence jumping them.—Superintendent Ross.
About the time that the Paiute were preparing for the millennial dawn, we begin to hear of a “dreamer prophet” on the Columbia, called Smohalla, who was becoming a thorn in the flesh of the Indian agents in that quarter, and was reported to be organizing among the Indians a new religion which taught the destruction of the whites and resistance to the government, and made moral virtues of all the crimes in the catalog. One agent, in disregard of grammar if not of veracity, gravely reported that “the main object is to allow a plurality of wives, immunity from punishment for lawbreaking, and allowance of all the vices—especially drinking and gambling—are chief virtues in the believers of this religion.” ([Comr.], 8.)
This was bad enough, but worse was behind it. It appeared that Smohalla and his followers, numbering perhaps about 2,000 Indians of various tribes along the Columbia in eastern Washington and Oregon, had never made treaties giving up any of their lands, and consequently claimed the right to take salmon in the streams and dig kamas in the prairies of their ancestral country undisturbed and unmolested, and stoutly objected to going on any of the neighboring reservations at Yakima, Umatilla, or Warmspring. There is no doubt that justice and common sense were on the side of the Indians, for by the reports of the agents themselves it is shown that the dwellers on the reservations were generally neglected, poor, and miserable, and subjected to constant encroachments by the whites in spite of treaties and treaty lines, while at the same time that agents and superintendents were invoking the aid of the military to compel Smohalla’s followers to go on a reservation these same men were moving heaven and earth to force the Indians already on a reservation to give up their treaty rights and remove to another and less valuable location—to begin life anew under the fostering care of the government until such time as the white man should want them to move on again.
These matters are treated at length in the annual reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, with the accompanying reports of superintendents and agents in charge of the reservations concerned, from 1870 to 1875. With regard to the Umatilla reservation, to which most strenuous efforts were made to remove the “renegades,” as they were called, Agent Boyle reports in 1870 ([Comr.], 9) that the Indians are “dispirited ... in consequence of the oft-repeated theme that their farms are to be taken from them and given to the white settlers.” He continues, “It is hardly to be expected that the Indians can retain this reservation much longer unless the strong arm of the government protects them. Daily I am called upon to notify the white settlers that they are encroaching upon the Indian lands.” He advises their removal to a permanent reservation, “knowing as I do that they must go sooner or later.” Again, “The agency has been established for the space of ten years, and I regret exceedingly that I have been most completely disappointed with what I see about me.” In discussing the removal of the Indians to a new reservation, Superintendent Meacham says of a considerable portion of them that it “would suit them better to be turned loose to look out for themselves.” ([Comr.], 10.)
In 1873 Agent Cornoyer reported that the Indians numbered 837, by the census of 1870, which he believes was as correct as could then be taken, but “this number I think is now too high.” He continues:
Of the appropriation of $4,000 per annum for beneficial objects, not one single dollar of that fund has been turned over to me since September, 1871; and of the appropriation for incidental expenses of $40,000 per annum for the Indian service in this state, only $200 of that appropriation has been turned over to me during the same period of two years.... I would also beg leave to call your attention to that portion of my last annual report wherein I called the attention of the Department to the unfulfilled stipulations of the treaty of June 9, 1855, with these Indians. ([Comr.], 11.)
Commissioner Brunot, in 1871, stated that the estimated number of Indians coming under the provisions of the treaty at the time it was made in 1855 was 3,500, and “by the census taken in 1870 the number was 1,622”—a decrease of nearly one-half in fifteen years. Of these only about half were on the reservation, the rest being on Columbia river, “never having partaken of the benefits of the treaty.” On the next page he tells us what some of these benefits are: “Maladministration of agents, and the misapplication of funds, the failure of the government to perform the promises of the treaty, and the fact that the Indians have been constantly agitated by assertions that the government intended their removal, and that their removal was urged for several years in succession in the reports of a former agent, thus taking away from them all incentives to improve their lands.” ([Comr.], 12.)
In 1871 a commission was sent to Umatilla and other reservations, which gave the Indians a chance to speak for themselves. The Cayuse chief, described as a Catholic Indian, in dress, personal appearance, and bearing superior to the average American farmer, said:
This reservation is marked out for us. We see it with our eyes and our hearts. We all hold it with our bodies and our souls. Right out here are my father and mother, and brothers and sisters and children, all buried. I am guarding their graves. My friend, this reservation, this small piece of land, we look upon it as our mother, as if she were raising us. You come to ask me for my land. It is like as if we who are Indians were to be sent away and get lost.... What is the reason you white men who live near the reservation like my land and want to get it? You must not think so. My friends, you must not talk too strong about getting my land. I like my land and will not let it go.
The Wallawalla chief said:
I have tied all the reservation in my heart and it can not be loosened. It is dear as our bodies to us.
The Umatilla chief said:
Our red people were brought up here.... When my father and mother died, I was left here. They gave me rules and gave me their land to live upon. They left me to take care of them after they were buried. I was to watch over their graves. I do not wish to part with my land. I have felt tired working on my land, so tired that the sweat dropped off me on the ground. Where is all that Governor Stevens or General Palmer said [i. e., that it was to be a reservation for the Indians forever]? I am very fond of this land that is marked out for me.... Should I take only a small piece of ground and a white man sit down beside me, I fear there would be trouble all the time.
An old man said:
I am getting old now, and I want to die where my father and mother and children have died. I do not wish to leave this land and go off to some other land.... I see where I have sweat and worked in trying to get food. I love my church, my mills, my farm, the graves of my parents and children. I do not wish to leave my land. That is all my heart, and I show it to you.
A young chief said:
I have only one heart, one tongue. Although you say, Go to another country, my heart is not that way. I do not wish for any money for my land. I am here, and here is where I am going to be.... I will not part with lands, and if you come again I will say the same thing. I will not part with my lands.
The commissioner who was conducting the negotiations, after enumerating the promises made to the Indians in return for the lands which they had surrendered under the original treaty of 1855, tells how some of these promises have been fulfilled:
... A miserably inadequate supply of worn-out agricultural implements. A group of eight or ten dilapidated shanties used for the agency buildings. The physician promised has never resided upon the reservation, but lives and practices his profession at Pendleton. The hospital promised (fifteen years ago) has not yet been erected.
Of their ever-living grievance Colonel Ross, superintendent of the Washington agencies, says:
Their only troubles arise from the attempts of white men to encroach upon the reservations. A mania prevails among a certain class of citizens in this direction. I verily believe that were the snow-crowned summits of Mount Rainier set apart as an Indian reservation, white men would immediately commence jumping them. ([Comr.], 14.)