7. As the change from savage to civilized habits must necessarily be gradual, they were to retain the right of fishing at their accustomed fishing-places, and of hunting, gathering berries and roots, and pasturing stock on unoccupied land as long as it remained vacant.
8. At some future time, when they should have become fitted for it, the lands of the reservations were to be allotted to them in severalty.
“It was proposed,” reported the governor, “to remove all the Indians on the east side of the Sound as far as the Snohomish, as also the S’Klallams, to Hood’s Canal, and generally to admit as few reservations as possible, with a view of finally concentrating them in one.” It was found necessary, however, in consequence of the mutual jealousies of so many independent tribes, to allow more reservations than he first intended, but some of them were established temporarily, with the right reserved in the President to remove the Indians to the larger reservations in the future.
The schooner R.B. Potter, Captain E.S. Fowler, was chartered at $700 per month, manned and victualed by the owner, to transport the personnel and treaty goods from point to point on the Sound. Orrington Cushman, Sidney S. Ford, Jr., and Henry D. Cock, with several assistants, were employed as quartermasters, to prepare camps and council grounds, make surveys, etc.
In all his councils Governor Stevens took the greatest pains to make the Indians understand what was said to them. To insure this he always had several interpreters, to check each other and prevent mistakes in translation, and was accustomed to consult the chiefs as to whom they wanted as interpreters.
“It was my invariable custom,” he states in the introduction to his final railroad report, page 18, “whenever I assembled a tribe in council, to procure from them their own rude sketches of the country, and a map was invariably prepared on a large scale and shown to them, exhibiting not only the region occupied by them, but the reservations that were proposed to be secured to them. At the Blackfoot council, the map there exhibited of the Blackfoot country—of the hunting-ground common to the Blackfeet and the Assiniboines, of the hunting-ground common to the Blackfeet and the tribes of Washington Territory, and of the passes of the Rocky Mountains by which this hunting-ground was reached—was the effective agent in guaranteeing to the Indians the exact facts as to what the treaty did propose, and to give them absolute and entire confidence in the government.”
He always urged and encouraged the Indians to make known their own views, wishes, and objections, and gave them time to talk matters over among themselves and make up their minds. Between the sessions of the council he would have the agents and interpreters explain the terms and point out the benefits of the proposed treaty, and would frequently summon the chiefs to his tent, and personally explain matters to them, and draw out their ideas. He also frequently invited public officers, and citizens of standing, to attend the councils, and would make use of them also to talk with and satisfy the Indians. All the proceedings of these councils, the deliberations and speeches as well as the treaties, were every word carefully taken down in writing, and transmitted to the Indian Bureau in Washington, where they are now on file. No one can read these records without being impressed with Governor Stevens’s great benevolence towards the Indians, and the absolute fairness, candor, and patience, as well as the judgment and tact, he manifested in dealing with them. One is also likely to be enlightened as to the native intelligence, ability, and shrewdness of the Indians themselves.
The first council was held on She-nah-nam, or Medicine Creek, now known as McAlister’s Creek, a mile above its mouth on the right bank, just below the house of Hartman, on a rising and wooded spot a few acres in extent, like an island with the creek on the one side (south) and the tide-marsh on the other. This stream flows along the south side of the Nisqually bottom, parallel to and half a mile from the river. The governor and his party, including Mason, Lieutenant W.A. Slaughter, of the 4th infantry, Doty, Gibbs, Edward Giddings, and the governor’s son, Hazard, a boy of twelve, went down to the treaty ground by canoes on December 24, and found a large space cleared of underbrush, the tents pitched, and everything made ready for the council by Simmons, Shaw, Cock, Cushman, and others, who had been sent ahead for that purpose. Seven hundred Indians of the tribes dwelling upon the upper Sound and as far down as the Puyallup River, including the Nisqually, Puyallup, and Squaxon tribes, were encamped near by. It rained nearly all day. In the afternoon the Indians drove a large band of ponies across the creek, forcing them to swim. Provisions were issued to the chiefs to distribute among their people.
On the following day the Indians assembled, taking seats on the ground in front of the council tent in semi-circular rows, and the objects and points of the proposed treaty were fully explained to them. The governor would utter a sentence in simple and clear language, and Colonel Shaw would interpret it in the Chinook jargon, which nearly all the Indians understood. The governor was extremely careful to make the Indians comprehend every sentence. Colonel Simmons, Gibbs, Cushman, and the citizens present, all knew the Chinook, and attentively followed Shaw as he interpreted, so that no mistake or omission could occur. It was slow and fatiguing work, this going over the ground sentence by sentence, and after several hours the Indians were dismissed for the day, told to think over what they had heard, and to assemble again the next morning. The governor wished to give them time to fully understand and reflect upon the proposed treaty, and encouraged them to talk freely to himself or any of his assistants in regard to it.
On the 26th the Indians assembled about nine o’clock to the number of 650, and Governor Stevens addressed them as follows:—