Lyman's History of old Walla Walla County, Vol. 1 / Embracing Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin counties

by William Denison Lyman

During this lull a very important event occurred. On March 3, 1853, the Territory of Washington was created and Isaac I. Stevens was appointed governor. The first Territorial Legislature laid out sixteen counties. Among them was Walla Walla County. That was the first "Old Walla Walla County." That it was much more extensive than the area especially covered by this work will appear when the boundaries are given, thus: "Beginning its line on the north bank of the Columbia at a point opposite the mouth of Des Chutes River, it ran thence north to the forty-ninth parallel." It therefore embraced all of what was then Washington Territory east of that line, which included all of present Idaho, about a fourth of present Montana, and about half of what is now Washington. That was the first attempt at organized government in Eastern Washington. The county seat was located "on the land of Lloyd Brooke," which was at Waiilatpu. The Legislature further decreed: "That George C. Bumford, John Owens, and A. Dominique Pambrun be, and they are hereby constituted and appointed the Board of County Commissioners; and that Narcises Remond be, and hereby is appointed sheriff; and that Lloyd Brooke be, and is hereby appointed judge of probate, and shall have jurisdiction as justice of the peace; all in and for the County of Walla Walla." These appointees with the exception of Mr. Owens (who lived near the present Missoula), were residents of the region of Waiilatpu and Frenchtown. That county organization was never inaugurated, and it remains as simply an interesting historical reminiscence.

In March, 1855, another most notable event occurred, the first in a series that made much history in the Northwest. This was the discovery of gold at the junction of the Pend Oreille River with the Columbia. The discoverer was a French half-breed who had previously lived at French Prairie, Ore. The announcement of the discovery caused a stampede to the east of the mountains and inaugurated a series of momentous changes.

Governor Stevens had entered upon his great task of organizing the newly created territory by undertaking the establishment of a number of Indian reservations. The necessities of the case—both justice to the Indians and the whites, as well as the proper development of the country whose vast possibilities were beginning to be seen by the farsighted ones—seemed to compel the segregation of the natives into comparatively small reservations. The history of the laying out of these reservations is an entire history by itself. There has been controversy as to the rights and wrongs of the case which has been best treated by Hazard Stevens in his "Life of Governor Stevens" (his father) in defence, and by Ezra Meeker in his "Tragedy of Leschi" in condemnation. Suffice it to say that the reservation policy was but faintly understood by the Indians and occurring in connection with the gold discoveries and the entrance of whites, eager for wealth and opportunity, it furnished all the conditions requisite for a first-class Indian war. Doubtless the great underlying cause was, as usual in Indian wars, the perception by Indians that their lands were steadily and surely passing out of their hands.

In 1854 and 1855 a general flame of war burst forth in widely separated regions. There can be no question that there was an attempt at co-operation by the tribes over the whole of Oregon and Washington. But so wide and so scattered was the field and so incapable were the Indians of intelligent unity of action that the white settlements were spared a war of extermination. The centers of warfare were the Rogue River in Southern Oregon, a number of points on Puget Sound, especially Seattle and vicinity, and White River Valley.

In May, 1855, Governor Stevens with a force of about fifty men reached Walla Walla for a conference with the tribes. The best authorities on the conference are Hazard Stevens, then a boy of fourteen, who accompanied his father, and Lieutenant Kip of the United States Army. This meeting at Walla Walla was one of the most interesting and important in the annals of Indian relationships with the United States Government. There seems some difference of opinion as to the exact location of the conference. It has generally been thought that Stevens' camp was at what is now known as "Council Grove Addition," near the residence of ex-Senator Ankeny. When General Hazard Stevens was in Walla Walla some years ago he gave his opinion that it was in the near vicinity of the residence of Mrs. Clara Quinn. William McBean, a son of the Hudson's Bay Company agent at Fort Walla Walla during the Cayuse war, who was himself in Stevens' force, as a young boy, told the author nearly thirty years ago that he believed the chief point of the conference was almost exactly on the present site of Whitman College. It appears from the testimony of old-timers that Mill Creek has changed its course at intervals in these years, and that as a result the exact identification is difficult. It seems plain, however, that the Indians were camped at various places along the two spring branches, "College Creek" and "Tannery Creek."

With his little force, Governor Stevens might well have been startled, if he had been a man sensible of fear, when there came tearing across the plain to the northeast of the council ground an army of twenty-five hundred Nez Perces, headed by Halhaltlossot, known to the whites as Lawyer. After the Indian custom they were whooping and firing their guns and making their horses prance and cavort in the clouds of dust stirred by hundreds of hoofs. But as it proved, these spectacular performers were the real friends of the Governor and his party and later on their salvation. Two days after, three hundred Cayuses, those worst of the Columbia River Indians, surly and scowling, made their appearance, led by Five Crows and Young Chief. Within two days again there arrived a force of two thousand Yakimas, Umatillas, and Walla Wallas. The "Valley of Waters" must have been at that time a genuine Indian paradise. The broad flats of Mill Creek and the Walla Walla were covered with grass and spangled with flowers. Numerous clear cold steams, gushing in springs from the ground and overhung by birches and cottonwoods, with the wild roses drooping over them, made their gurgling way to a junction with the creek. Countless horses grazed on the bunch-grass hills and farther back in the foothills there was an abundance of game. No wonder that the Indians, accustomed to gather for councils and horse-races, and all the other delights of savage life, should have scanned with jealous eyes the manifest desire of the whites for locations in a spot "where every prospect pleases and man alone is vile."

It became evident to Governor Stevens that a conspiracy was burrowing beneath his feet. Peupeumoxmox of the Walla Wallas and Kahmiakin of the Yakimas were the leaders. The former was now an old man, embittered by the murder of his son Elijah, and regarded by many as having been the real fomenter of the Whitman Massacre. Kahmiakin was a remarkable Indian. Winthrop, in his "Canoe and Saddle," gives a vivid description of him as being an of extraordinary force and dignity. Governor Stevens said of him: "He is a peculiar man, reminding me of the panther and the grizzly bear. His countenance has an extraordinary play, one moment in frowns, the next in smiles, flashing with light and black as Erebus the same instant. His pantomime is great, and his gesticulations many and characteristic. He talks mostly in his face and with his hands and arms." He was a man of lofty stature and splendid physique, a typical Indian of the best type. This great Yakima chief saw that his race was doomed unless they could check White occupancy at its very beginning. Restrained by no scruples (as indeed his civilized opponents seldom were) he seems to have conspired with the Walla Wallas and Cayuses to wipe out Stevens and his band, then rush to The Dalles and exterminate the garrison there; then with united forces of all the Eastern Oregon Indians sweep on into the principal settlements of the whites, those of the Willamette Valley, and wipe them out. Meanwhile their allies on the Sound were to seize the pivotal points there. Thus Indian victory would be comprehensive and final. Preposterous as such an expectation appears now to us, it was not, after all, so remote as we might think. Six or seven thousand of these powerful warriors, splendidly mounted and well armed, if well directed, crossing the mountains into the scattered settlements of Western Oregon and Washington might well have cleaned up the country, with the exception of Portland, which was then quite a little city and in a position which would have made any successful attack by Indians hopeless.

But the Nez Perces saved the day. Halhaltlossot perceived that the only hope for his people was in peace and as favorable reservation assignments as could be secured. He nipped the conspiracy in the bud. Hazard Stevens gives a thrilling account of how the Nez Percé chief went by night to the Governor's camp and revealed the conspiracy. He moved his own camp to a point adjoining the whites and made it clear that the hostiles could accomplish their aims only in the face of Nez Percé opposition. This situation made the conspiracy impotent.