There were many cases of retaliation, but the Indians were fairly peaceable until degraded by drink.
The beginning of hostilities against the white people on the Sound, by some historians is said to have been the killing of Leander Wallace at old Fort Nesqually. One of them gives this account:
“Prior to the Whitman massacre, Owhi and Kamiakin, the great chiefs of the upper and lower Yakima nations, while on a visit to Fort Nesqually, had observed to Dr. Tolmie that the Hudson Bay Company’s posts with their white employes were a great convenience to the natives, but the American immigration had excited alarm and was the constant theme of hostile conversation among the interior tribes. The erection in 1848, at Fort Nesqually, of a stockade and blockhouse had also been the subject of angry criticism by the visiting northern tribes. So insolent and defiant had been their conduct that upon one afternoon for over an hour the officers and men of the post had guns pointed through the loop-holes at a number of Skawhumpsh Indians, who, with their weapons ready for assault, had posted themselves under cover of adjacent stumps and trees.
“Shortly before the shooting of Wallace, rumors had reached the fort that the Snoqualmies were coming in force to redress the alleged cruel treatment of Why-it, the Snoqualmie wife of the young Nesqually chief, Wyampch, a dissipated son of Lahalet.
“Dr. Tolmie treated such a pretext as a mere cloak for a marauding expedition of the Snoqualmies.
“Sheep shearing had gathered numbers of extra hands, chiefly Snohomish, who were occupying mat lodges close to the fort, besides unemployed stragglers and camp followers.
“On Tuesday, May 1, 1849, about noon, numbers of Indian women and children fled in great alarm from their lodges and sought refuge within the fort. A Snoqualmie war party, led by Pat Kanem, approached from the southwestern end of the American plains. Dr. Tolmie having posted a party of Kanakas in the northwest bastion went out to meet them.
“Tolmie induced Pat Kanem to return with him to the fort, closing the gate after their entrance.”
The following is said to be the account given by the Hudson Bay Company’s officials:
“The gate nearest the mat lodges was guarded by a white man and an Indian servant. While Dr. Tolmie was engaged in attending a patient, he heard a single shot fired, speedily followed by two or three others. He hastily rushed to the bastion, whence a volley was being discharged at a number of retreating Indians who had made a stand and found cover behind the sheep washing dam of Segualitschu Creek. Through a loop-hole the bodies of an Indian and a white man were discernible at a few yards distance from the north gate where the firing had commenced.
“He hastened thither and found Wallace breathing his last, with a full charge of buckshot in his stomach. The dying man was immediately carried inside of the fort.
“The dead Indian was a young Skawhumpsh, who had accompanied the Snoqualmies.
“The Snohomish workers, as also the stragglers, had been, with the newly arrived Snoqualmies, in and out of the abandoned lodges, chatting and exchanging news. A thoughtless act of the Indian sentry posted at the water gate, in firing into the air, had occasioned a general rush of the Snohomish, who had been cool observers of all that had passed outside.
“Walter Ross, the clerk, came to the gate armed, and seeing Kussass, a Snoqualmie, pointing his gun at him, fired but missed him. Kussass then fired at Wallace. Lewis, an American, had a narrow escape, one ball passing through his vest and trousers and another grazing his left arm.
“Quallawowit, as soon as the firing began, shot through the pickets and wounded Tziass, an Indian, in the muscles of his shoulder, which soon after occasioned his death.
“The Snoqualmies as they retreated to the beach killed two Indian ponies and then hastily departed in their canoes.
“At the commencement of the shooting, Pat Kanem, guided by Wyampch, escaped from the fort, a fortunate occurrence, as, upon his rejoining his party the retreat at once began.
“When Dr. Tolmie stooped to raise Wallace, and the Snoqualmies levelled their guns to kill that old and revered friend, an Indian called ‘the Priest’ pushed aside the guns, exclaiming ‘Enough mischief has already been done.’
“The four Indians of the Snoqualmie party whose names were given by Snohomish informers to Dr. Tolmie, together with Kussass and Quallawowit, were afterward tried for the murder of Wallace.”
Their names were Whyik, Quallawowit, Kussass, Stahowie, Tatetum and Quilthlimkyne; the last mentioned was a Duwampsh.
Eighty blankets were offered for the giving up of these Indians.
The Snoqualmies came to Steilacoom, where they were to be tried, in war paint and parade.
The officials came from far; down the Columbia; up the Cowlitz, and across to Puget Sound, about two hundred miles in primitive style, by canoe, oxcart or cayuse.
The trial occupied two days; on the third day, the two condemned, Kussass and Quallawowit, were executed.