Kal-chote then presented another flag and said, “What you have said is good, and what you have written is good.”
The Indians gave three cheers or shouts as each concluded. The governor then signed the treaty, and was followed by the Indian chiefs and principal men, forty-one in number, of the Neah, Waatch, Tsoo-yess, and Osett villages, or bands of the Makahs. Among the names are Klah-pe-an-hie or Andrew Jackson, Tchoo-quut-lah or Yes Sir, and Swell or Jeff Davis.
The witnesses were M.T. Simmons, Indian agent; George Gibbs, secretary; B.F. Shaw, interpreter; C.M. Hitchcock, M.D.; E.S. Fowler, Orrington Cushman, and Robert Davis.
The provisions of this treaty are the same as in the others. The annuities in goods, etc., amounted to $30,000, and $3000 were provided to improve the reservation, which embraced Neah Bay and Cape Flattery and their principal village. It was intended only for a place of residence, with enough cultivable land for potatoes and vegetables, and, what was more important, to prevent their being crowded off by fishing establishments. The locality is unfit for agriculture, being rocky and sterile, with an annual rainfall of 122 inches. And the reserve was all they needed, for the Makahs are bold and skillful fishermen and sailors, accustomed to venture thirty to fifty miles out to sea in their large canoes, and take the whale and halibut, while inshore they hunt the seal and sea-otter, and catch the salmon. They are a more sturdy, brave, and enterprising race than the natives of the Sound, more resembling the northern Indians. In their remote, rocky stronghold, protected by the strong arm of the government extended over them by this treaty, but depending upon the sea and their own efforts for a livelihood, they have prospered greatly, putting up vast quantities of fish, furs, and oil for market; and there are few white communities that have so much wealth per capita, or wealth so evenly distributed, as these industrious and manly Indians.
Immediately after the signing the presents were distributed, the camp was broken up, and in the evening the party reëmbarked. The little vessel at once hoisted sail for Port Townsend, where, after a three days’ trip, being delayed by head winds, she arrived February 3. The next day the governor, with some of the party, took the Major Tompkins for Victoria, in order to confer with Governor Douglass upon the means of preventing the piratical incursions of the northern Indians upon the Sound. On the 5th he returned to Port Townsend, and reached Olympia on the night of the 6th.
This brief campaign was Napoleonic, in rapidity and success. In six weeks Governor Stevens met and treated with five thousand Indians, of numerous independent and jealous tribes and bands, and in four separate councils carefully and indefatigably made clear to them the new policy, convinced them of its benefits to them, and concluded with them four separate treaties, by which the Indian title to the whole Puget Sound basin was extinguished forever, and the great source and danger of collision between the races was removed. For the eight thousand five hundred Indians hitherto ignored by Congress and treated by the settlers as mere vagrants, to be shoved aside at the whim or self-interest of any white man, he established nine reservations, containing over 60,000 acres, for their permanent homes and exclusive possessions; provided annuities of clothing, goods, and useful articles for twenty years, aggregating $300,000; abolished slavery and war among them; excluded liquor from the reservations; extended over them the protection of the government, with agents, schools, teachers, farmers, and mechanics to instruct them; and, in a word, set their feet fairly on “the white man’s road.” To accomplish this astonishing work in such brief time, he traveled eight hundred miles upon the Sound and Strait in the most inclement season of the year, half the distance, and that the most dangerous, in a small sailing-craft. He disregarded the storms and rains of that inclement season, and spared neither himself nor his assistants. It is not easy to say who had the hardest task, the agents and messengers who traveled all over the Sound in canoes in the tempestuous rainy season to call the scattered bands together, or the unfortunate secretary, who had to catch and set down on paper the jaw-breaking native names.
The success and rapidity with which he carried through these treaties were due to the careful and thorough manner in which he planned them, and prepared the minds of the Indians by his tour among and talks to them a year previous, and by the messages and agents he had sent among them. Besides, the Indians realized their own feebleness and uncertain future, divided into so many bands, exposed to the depredations of the northern Indians, and dreading the advent and encroachments of the whites. Their minds consequently were well attuned for treating; and when they understood the wise and beneficent policy and liberal terms offered by the governor, they gladly accepted them, and put their trust in him as their friend and protector, a trust never withdrawn and never forsaken.
The Indian war which occurred soon after, and the delay in the ratification of the treaties, seriously militated against carrying out the beneficent policy so well inaugurated, and later the occasional appointment of inefficient and dishonest agents has proved even more detrimental; but notwithstanding all these drawbacks the Indians have made substantial advances in civilization, and it is interesting to compare their present condition, as given in the last reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and from local sources.
Their numbers have diminished only about one half. No one seeing their debased condition in 1850 to 1860 (except the Makahs) would have deemed it possible for them to hold their own so well.
| Makahs | 750 |
| Tulalip Agency, lower Sound Indians | 1700 |
| Puyallup Agency, upper Sound Indians | 1850 |
| 4300 |