After the suppression of hostilities on the Sound, becoming satisfied that the reservations set apart at the treaty of Medicine Creek were inadequate for the Nisquallies and Puyallups, Governor Stevens held a council with these Indians on Fox Island on August 4, and arranged with them to give them, in place of those established by the treaty, a larger reservation for the former tribe on the Nisqually River, a few miles above its mouth, embracing some excellent bottom land, and for the latter twenty-one thousand acres of the finest alluvial land at the mouth of the Puyallup River. At the same time a smaller reservation was given the Duwhamish Indians on the Muckleshoot prairie. The Puyallup reservation included thirteen donation claims taken by white settlers, but the governor had these appraised by a commission which he appointed for the purpose, and its awards, amounting to some five thousand dollars, were paid by Congress. On his recommendation the President, by executive order, promptly established the new reservations, in pursuance of the sixth article of the treaty, which empowered him to take such action. The Indians have remained in undisturbed possession of them ever since. When the Northern Pacific Railroad Company fixed its terminus at Tacoma in 1874, it cast covetous eyes upon this noble tract of land situated across the bay, right opposite the proposed city, and the author, then its attorney in Washington Territory, was instructed to examine and report upon the validity of the Indian title to it. His report satisfied the officers of the company that the right of the Indians to their reservation was indisputable.

Much of the success attending Governor Stevens’s prosecution of the Indian war was due to the able and energetic men he called to his aid as staff officers. He especially commended General W.W. Miller as having imparted “extraordinary efficiency to the quartermaster’s and commissary department, the most difficult of all,—which, generally kept distinct, was a single department in our service,—reflecting the highest capacity and devotion to the public service upon its chief and subordinate officers.” It was General Miller who collected, largely by impressment, organized, and led out into the Indian country the large ox-train which hauled out three months’ supplies for the volunteers in the beginning of the campaign, without which it could not have been waged. He was distinguished by remarkable sound sense and judgment, and the governor counseled with and relied upon him more than any other. And after the Indian war General Miller was his closest friend in the Territory. The governor also took occasion to make special acknowledgment to General Tilton for his services as adjutant-general, where his military experience was of great value. It is much to be regretted that the limits of this work preclude the detailed mention of their services, which they so well merit; but the remarkable success of their departments is their best encomium.

CHAPTER XXXIX
THE WAR IN THE UPPER COUNTRY

While the war of the Sound was thus vigorously and successfully prosecuted, operations east of the Cascades were marked by lack of vigor and purpose, and no impression was made upon the hostile tribes, except to encourage them to continue on the war-path. The Oregon volunteers, who wintered in the Walla Walla valley, crossed Snake River in March, advanced a short distance up the Palouse, then traversed the country over to the Columbia below Priest’s Rapids, from which point they returned to Walla Walla, and in May moved back to the Dalles and were disbanded. Thus it will be seen how easy it would have been for the regular forces, supporting and supplementing this movement of the Oregon volunteers across Snake River, to have made the effective campaign that Governor Stevens outlined to Wool. With a little reinforcement, the volunteers could have pushed beyond Priest’s Rapids up the left bank of the Columbia, driving the hostiles across the river into the Yakima country, when the main columns of regulars, entering that country from the Dalles and up the Yakima River, could have “put the hostiles to their last battle.”

But it was not until May that Colonel Wright marched from the Dalles into the Yakima country with five companies of regulars. He found the hostiles in strong force on the Nahchess River, one of the upper tributaries of the Yakima. Instead of fighting, he stopped to parley with them; but after a week of talking to no purpose, he sent back for reinforcements.

At this juncture, the hostile Indians on the Sound having been thoroughly subdued, and those of the upper country being still in unbroken strength and confidence, Governor Stevens, on May 28, proposed to Lieutenant-Colonel Casey a joint movement of their respective forces across the Cascades:—

“I would suggest your sending three companies to the Nahchess, retaining one at or near the pass, and advancing the others into the Yakima country.

“At the same time I will put my whole mounted force through the Snoqualmie Pass and down the main Yakima. The Northern battalion shall occupy posts on the line of the Snoqualmie from the falls to the eastern slope. A depot shall be established on the eastern slope; all the horsemen will then be available to strike and pursue the enemy.”

But Casey, strictly forbidden by Wool to recognize the volunteers, sent two companies under Major Garnett to reinforce Wright by the circuitous Cowlitz and Columbia route, declining to “send him across the Nahchess Pass, for the reason, first, I consider there would be too much delay in getting across. In the next place, I have not sufficient transportation to spare for that purpose.” From Steilacoom to Wright’s camp on the Nahchess was barely a hundred miles by the direct route across the pass; by the Cowlitz-Columbia route it was three hundred and fifteen miles, for a hundred and fifteen of which the troops could be transported by water, leaving two hundred to march. By these facts, and by the ease and celerity of Shaw’s march a few days later over the rejected route, the validity and candor of Casey’s “reason” may be judged.