After a quiet and restful Sunday in both camps the Indians assembled at the appointed time, and the council was opened on Monday, July 9, at half past one P.M., by the governor, in a long speech, explaining, as at the other councils, the terms and advantages proffered by the government. Although the Indians were extremely friendly, and very desirous of “following the white man’s road” and coming under the protection of the Great Father, their only apparent refuge from the fierce Blackfeet, whose incessant raids threatened them with speedy extinction, the council proved unexpectedly difficult and protracted, lasting eight days, and the treaty was only saved by Governor Stevens’s persistence and astuteness in accepting an alternative proposition offered by Victor at the last moment. The chronic objection of every tribe to leaving its own country and going on a reservation in the territory of another was the stumbling-block.
The governor required the three tribes, as they were really one people, being all Salish, speaking a common language, and closely intermarried and allied, and also reduced in numbers, to unite upon one reservation. He offered to set apart a tract for them either in the upper Bitter Root valley in Victor’s country, or the Horse Plains and Jocko River in the Pend Oreille territory, as they might prefer, and urged them to decide and agree among themselves upon one of these locations; but neither tribe was willing to abandon its wonted region, where they were accustomed to pitch their lodges, and where their dead were buried. The following brief extracts from the proceedings give an idea of the course of the difficult and at times stormy and vexatious negotiations.
When the governor finished Victor said:—
“I am very tired now, and my people. You [the governor] are the only man who has offered to help us.... I have two places, here is mine [pointing out Bitter Root valley on the map], and this is mine [pointing out Flathead River and Clark’s Fork]. I will think of it, and tell you which is best. I believe you wish to assist me to help my children here so that they may have plenty to eat, and so that they may save their souls.”
Alexander: “You are talking to me now, my Big Father. You have told me you have to make your own laws to punish your children. I love my children. I think I could not head them off to make them go straight. I think it is with you to do so. If I take your own way, your law, my people then will be frightened. These growing people [young people] are all the same. Perhaps those who come after them may see it well before them. I do not know your laws. Perhaps, if we see a rope, if we see how it punishes, we will be frightened. When the priest talked to them, tried to teach them, they all left him. My children, maybe when the whites teach you, you may see it before you. Now this is my ground. We are poor, we Indians. The priest is settled over there [pointing across the mountains towards the north, the direction of his country]. There, where he is, I am very well satisfied. I will talk hereafter about the ground. I am done for to-day.”
In this speech Alexander expresses the difficulty he has to manage his unruly young people, and his fear that the white rule might prove too strict for them.
THE FLATHEAD COUNCIL
Red Wing, a Flathead chief: “We gathered up yesterday the three peoples you see here. They think they are three nations. I thought these nations were going to talk each about its own land. Now I hear the governor: my land is all cut up in pieces. I thought we had two places. This ground is the Flatheads’, that across the mountains is the Pend Oreilles’; perhaps not, perhaps we are all one. We made up another mind yesterday, to-day it is different. We will go back and have another council.”