The Peavey Gang vs. The US Army
When federal troops tried to stop construction on the Puyallup reservation, Indigenous laborers and their allies literally rolled the government's attempts out of the way.
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.
Dan Lament's regulars were routed this afternoon on the Puyallup Indian reservation by the peavey gang. A detachment from Company K, Fourteenth Infantry, marched around Brown's Point and attempted to drive off the Indian citizens who were grading for a railroad. In the name of the president, the Indians were ordered to stop work. They responded by working all the harder. Mrs. James Coates, the wife of an ex-chief, wielded an ax and defied the government to interfere with the Indians while at work on their own patented lands. Then the peavey gang got in its work, ordered to the top of a twenty-foot embankment to roll down logs upon the advancing soldiers. When the logs came rolling down the hill, the soldiers scampered for safety, and the Indians applauded the way in which they vamoosed with the Puyallup warwhoop. Foreman Varner was told to go ahead with the work and lose no time with the soldiers. Capt. Carpenter, who commanded the troops, ultimately ordered his men to withdraw, noting that this was 'enough for today.'
“Mrs. James Coates, the wife of an ex-chief, wielded an ax and defied the government to interfere with the Indians while at work on their own patented lands.”
This standoff on the Puyallup reservation mirrors the long, contentious history of land sovereignty in the Pacific Northwest. Today, the Puyallup Tribe exercises significant authority over its ancestral lands and maritime resources, representing a total reversal of the power dynamics seen here in 1893.
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