Puyallup Elders Defy the Wilson Bill
Indigenous leaders on the Puyallup reservation gather to protest government efforts to force the sale of their tribal lands.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A meeting of the Puyallup Indians was held at Alvin Jackson's house today on the reservation to consider the Wilson bill, passed by the last Congress for the opening of the Puyallup reservation. Judge Wickersham was invited to be present and read the bill, which he did, and was then followed by Thomas Lane, Jonah Stanup, George W. Sykes, John Hote, and others. George W. Sykes spoke in his native tongue, translated by Peter Stanup: 'I have been watching the moves of the Dawes combination for several years. By the terms of the treaty and the laws of Congress, the Indians had at last obtained patents to their lands, and this Wilson bill is only an attempt to get back again what had once been given to them. It is time that they, as a people, put a stop to this kind of juggling.' Jonah Stanup, Peter Stanup's father, added: 'He was old and blind in his eyes, but he could see plainly that this bill was another attempt to steal from them the school farm if they could not get any of their patented land.' The meeting concluded with a unanimous decision to refuse to offer any land for sale under the provisions of the Wilson bill.
“It is time that they, as a people, put a stop to this kind of juggling.”
This meeting highlights the long-standing Indigenous resistance to federal policies designed to dismantle tribal land holdings, such as the Dawes Act and its successors. The tension between promised land sovereignty and federal 'juggling' remains a core issue in Pacific Northwest tribal rights advocacy today.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.