The Forgotten Spokane Tribal Council of 1887

The Northwestern Commission, which has finished its work and been engaged in this city the past two weeks in compiling its report, is ready to lay that document before the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. The first negotiations of the commission, after leaving the Blackfoot agencies, were with the Spokanes. They tried to arrange a council with the two leading chiefs of the tribe, Spokane Jerry and Lot Welch, but as the band of which one is leader were Protestants and the band of the other Catholics, it was found very difficult to harmonize them sufficiently to secure a council. The council was finally fixed for Spokane Falls, but as the Indians are very poor and ignorant, it was found hard to notify them or get them to attend a council. There are less than four hundred Indians of the Spokane bands all told, and as their lands are of poor quality, they spend most of their time hanging around the town of Spokane Falls picking up a living. The Spokanes held vast quantities of land which was lost to them through the action of white men. Before they would agree to remove to the Coeur d’Alene reservation, they demanded that the Government reimburse them for their lost lands. Negotiations with them were hard, because the chiefs preferred whiskey drinking around the town to wearing a reservation. They wanted separate reservations and the commission could go no further without telegraphing their proposition to Washington. The President refused to lay off another reservation, and finally, through the intervention of the Catholic priest missionary to the Spokanes, in whom they have the greatest faith, an agreement was arrived at by which the Spokanes cede to the Government all right and title to their lost lands, about 30,000 acres in Idaho and Washington Territories.