In further fulfilment of the prediction that the demoniacal siren of the falls should no longer have dominion over his people, the Spokanes and kindred tribes shunned the river, and from a race of fishers, paddling bent and kneeling in their crude canoes, they became an intrepid race of horsemen. On horseback they rode to war or hunted the moose and antelope, and horses became the sign of wealth and the medium of exchange. For their obedience in carrying out the details of his malediction upon the water demon, Speelyai prospered them. Their wealth increased and their numbers multiplied. Their tepees were warm with many furs and picturesque with the trophies of battle and the chase. Their larders abounded with dried meat, meal, wapatoo, and camas root. They became the most valiant warriors between the Bitter Root Mountains and the sea. The power of the allied tribes of Eastern Washington became so formidable that the American Government was compelled to send its most skilful military leaders to effect their pacification, and it was not until Phil Sheridan eclipsed them in daring and General Miles forced Chief Joseph to capitulation that the scattered settlers in the Spokane country ceased to tremble at the impending descent of mounted savages.

By repeated violation of treaty stipulations, by burnings and massacres and thefts, they had asserted their dominion. In 1858 the Spokanes gave tragic demonstration of their determination to enforce the native declaration that the armies of the whites should never traverse their domain. In that year Colonel Steptoe, seeking to lead a detachment to garrison the post of the Hudson Bay Company at Colville, near the British border, was defeated with great slaughter by the Spokanes. With an unscalped remnant of his force he crawled at night from the scene of his disaster and, abandoning his guns, rushed in confusion back to Walla Walla. The god of Indian battles still reigned and the Government at Washington was alarmed. Then Colonel George Wright was chosen to command, a man whose merciless determination and sanguinary triumphs gave to his notable campaign a distinction not paralleled until the Sirdar of Egypt just forty years later led his expedition to Khartoum, silenced the dervishes near Omdurman, and hurled the severed head of the Khalifa into the Nile. The Spokanes did not attribute their defeat to the superior strategy of their pale-faced foe. Their fatal mistake, they said, was in making their last stand on the Spokane Plains, within sound of the exultant shrieking and sinister roaring of their ancient enemy, the evil spirit of the Spokane cataract, and it was she, not their white conqueror, who herded and stampeded them into terrified surrender. They had fought with abandoned daring, and had employed all their arts of strategy, but were forced back toward the abode of the water monster until her roaring mockery thundered in their ears. Now they set the tall prairie grass afire, and over the site of the coming city there blazed on that parched day of September 5, 1858, a conflagration no less formidable than war. It enveloped, but could not stay the pursuing column. Destiny was striding through flame and blood that day to open a way for civilized occupation of the Pacific Northwest. Hundreds of painted warriors, including the leader of the Palouses, a chief of the Pend d'Oreilles, one of the chiefs of the Cœur d'Alenes, and two brothers of Spokane Gary, the commander of the savage army, lay dead.

[ THE CITY HALL, SPOKANE.]

As if by a miracle, not one of Colonel Wright's soldiers fell, a further proof to the Indians that their evil goddess had presided over the conflict. In token of their subjection they brought their wives, children, horses, and all portable belongings and made complete offering at the feet of their conqueror. Thus the site of the present city of Spokane became the scene of one of the most striking and significant triumphs of civilized man over the aborigines of the American continent. What William Henry Harrison did at Tippecanoe for the old Northwest in scattering the allied natives under Tecumseh, Colonel Wright accomplished at Spokane Plains for the Northwest in demolishing the league of tribes under the Spokanes. It is true that Chief Joseph later, emulating the ambitions of Black Hawk, sought to reunite the tribes in rebellion against the whites, but though he succeeded in stirring the Federal Government to vigilant campaigns, he failed in his great object, just as did the successor of Tecumseh. Wright's sway was undisputed. Indians convicted of crimes he ordered hanged. Superfluous horses were shot. He spread terror as he moved, and peace followed in his footsteps.

But the Civil War and financial panic delayed the Western movement. In 1863 there were but ninety registered citizens in the Spokane country. And when the first sawmill came, in 1873, its wheels revolved slowly, for the failure of Jay Cooke delayed the transcontinental railway, that was to connect the city with the East. Eight years later, just twenty years ago, the first locomotive rumbled into the new settlement. Now there was to be a city. On September 1st of that year came the first lawyer, J. Kennedy Stout, and it is characteristic of the spirit that has ever continued to quicken the activities of the community that four days after his arrival he had drafted a charter for the city, taken the necessary legal steps toward its incorporation, and had been chosen its attorney.

J. KENNEDY STOUT.

In 1885, the city, numbering two thousand people, was an alert and distributing centre. Grain was pouring in from the fertile acres of the Palouse to be ground into flour, and the time was at hand when a remarkable discovery in the neighboring mountains of Idaho was to turn the tide of travel toward Spokane, and in less than a decade develop it into the greatest railroad centre west of Chicago. It was in that year that three men and an ass, in the Cœur d'Alenes, a few miles from Spokane, camped toward night in a desolate cañon. Their provisions were nearly exhausted. They held forlorn council, and decided to abandon their search for mines in those gloomy and precipitous solitudes. Toward sundown the animal strayed from its tether. They found it gazing across the ravine at a reflected gleam of the setting sun. A marvellous series of ore seams had mirrored the light. The dumb beast had discovered the greatest deposits of galena on the globe. The whole mountain was a mine.

Within an hour after the arrival of the sensational news at Spokane, that city's unparalleled boom began. Prospectors, engineers, and capitalists from the four corners of the Republic hurried to the new city. A railway magnate rode out on horseback to view the mountain, and within four months from the day of his visit ore was being shipped by rail to Spokane. North and south, for three hundred miles, mines were found on every mountainside, and every additional discovery hastened Spokane's growth and quickened the fever of its speculation. As a local historian said, "Men went to sleep at night on straw mattresses, and woke to find themselves on velvet couches stuffed with greenbacks." Wealth waited for men at every corner. The delirium of speculation whirled the sanest minds. Of the many clergymen, for example, who arrived to advocate the perfecting of titles to homes not made with hands, eleven abdicated the pulpit and, indifferent to the menace of moth and rust, laid up substantial treasure.

Five years from the discovery of the mines in the Cœur d'Alenes the city numbered twenty thousand inhabitants. Fire swept over it and laid twenty-two solid squares in ashes. Before the ruins cooled, the city was being rebuilt, this time in steel and brick and stone. The Spokesman-Review, which began its editorial career in a small, discarded chapel, soon moved into a ten-story structure, and that evolution was, in epitome, the story of the city. Architects of some renown designed palaces and châteaux for the wealthy. Every citizen hoped to outdazzle his neighbor in the beauty of his home, and this has resulted in giving Spokane unique distinction in architectural impressiveness.