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A federal judge rules that the north half of the Colville Indian Reservation has been restored to the public domain, shifting jurisdiction to Stevens County.
“Judge Hanford holds that the land involved has been restored to the public domain, and the federal authorities have no jurisdiction over it.”
A field letter from the Indian war in Oregon and Washington urges the Army to occupy the Colville Valley, cut off Indigenous trade, and expel missionaries and Hudson’s Bay Company employees.
“This Colville Valley is the key to very much of the whole hostile district.”
A treaty strips the Colville Indian Reservation down to individual allotments, and surveyors are called to run more than 1,000 miles of lines across northeastern Washington.
“A definite step toward throwing open the great Colville Indian reservation to public settlement has at last been taken...”
A railroad worker's lethal temper leads to a dramatic manhunt near Colville as a suspect flees on horseback after a double shooting.
“Adams then made his escape on a fleet horse and was followed half an hour by Sheriff H. Ide.”
When an iconic hotel caught fire in a Washington town, desperate residents turned to explosives to save the rest of the block from total destruction.
“Lack of water and the intense heat from the building... forced the citizens who had turned out en masse to fight the fire to extreme measures... dynamite was freely used.”
A grim report from the Colville Valley details parched crops, ruined timber, and a sun obscured by thick smoke.
“At night the mountains appear like illuminated cities set upon hills.”
Newspaper reports indicate that Indigenous people at the Colville Agency in Washington Territory are being actively forced off their ancestral lands by encroaching white settlers.
“are being crowded out of the valley by the whites.”
A detailed federal report traces the long-standing tensions between settlers and the Columbia Band over land rights in Northeastern Washington.
“Moses complained bitterly that he was being robbed of his property.”
Son of an Astor Fur Company founder and grandson of Chief Comcomly, Ronald McDonald dies on the Colville Indian Reservation after a life of shipwreck, captivity, and frontier guiding.
“Scarcely a man in the Northwest had such a fund of adventurous reminiscences.”
Settlers at Colville petition for military intervention following reports of burned hay fields and armed conflict with local Indigenous people.
“The settlers have signed a petition requesting that a company of soldiers be sent there to protect their property and perhaps their lives.”
An 1891 report from Colville showcases the era's aggressive push to seize Indigenous land for white settlement, detailing the minerals and rich soil the state's residents felt belonged to them rather than the tribes.
“It is hard for the prospector's conscience to look across the Columbia river upon a portion of his own country, so rich and yet forbidden his inspection.”
Indigenous residents are firing the brush and driving off encroaching prospectors in a desperate attempt to protect their land from white invaders.
“The Indians are up in arms against white invaders and have fired the reservation to expel them.”
A drainage project meant to reclaim marshland turns a peaceful river into a recurring disaster zone for downstream farmers.
“The river, being a sluggish stream, could not convey the great surplusage down its entire course before nearly every nook and corner had been flooded.”
An engineer’s report argues that the Colville Valley is held back by the presence of Indigenous and mixed-race populations.
“These people, owing to the way they have been treated and the insecure tenure on which they hold their lands, are shiftless and unprogressive, make no effort to improve and beautify, and are a stumbling block in the way of civilization.”
Jack Osakin, nephew of Chief Moses, is accused of killing his mother after earlier slaying his brother. The chief, grief-stricken, has ordered him shot on sight as authorities fear he may flee to Canada.
“He has a “very sick heart in his breast.””
An eyewitness watches a mysterious, cataclysmic burst of water tear through a mountain ravine near Colville, obliterating trees and tracks.
“A great breast of water, fifty feet in height, came rushing out of the canyon... Trees three feet in diameter in the path of the flood were snapped like so many toothpicks.”
An 1894 dispatch from the capital details the surveying and allotment machinery behind opening the northern Colville Reservation to settlement — right down to the promise that the cost would be repaid 'from the proceeds of the lands when sold.'
“This sum which congress is asked to appropriate at the present time will be reimbursable from the proceeds of the lands when sold, as provided by the original act.”
Ranald McDonald — son of a Hudson's Bay trader and Chief Comcomly's daughter — died on the Colville reservation after a life that carried him from Astoria to a Japanese prison and back to the mouth of the Columbia.
“He was taken in custody by the officers of the government and placed in prison for the offense of treading on the sacred ground of the mikado.”
Colville fights to remain the seat of government as the county commissioners attempt to move it to Kettle Falls.
“Notwithstanding the fact that it required a three-fifths majority... the county commissioners, contrary to the advice of the prosecuting attorney and the law as well, held that the prize should be awarded to such town.”
Eastern Washington settlers cheer the survey of the Colville reservation, expecting homesteads — but President Cleveland's message warns the surplus land may not be thrown open at all, and the paper has a barb for the waiters.
“There are poor men in Eastern Washington who expect to get homesteads on the big reservation, and who have been waiting for years.”
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