The Land Grabbing Battle for Puyallup
A railroad-backed land company attempted to seize 18,000 acres of tribal land, painting it as 'waste' to displace the indigenous population.
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.
The Puyallup reservation, as most of our readers are aware, lies at the junction of King and Pierce Counties. Its area is 18,000 acres. The reservation was subsequently cut down, and that portion thrown open to settlement on which now stands the city of Tacoma. The greater part of the land is of great fertility, and for agricultural purposes is extremely valuable. The Land Company has long had greedy eyes upon its 18,000 broad and attractive acres. Some time ago, C. H. Wright, the Land Company’s President, made a written proposition to the Secretary of the Interior to purchase the entire tract. He informed the Secretary that it was practically waste land; that there were only about 1,230 Indians upon it; that only 80 acres were in cultivation, and that the Indians could be put off on another tract as well as not. The Secretary made inquiry and learned that Mr. Wright’s statements were not entirely true; that there were 600 Indians on the reservation, and their numbers increasing constantly; that there were 800 acres under cultivation, and that the Indians were greatly opposed to removal. The new light thrown upon the scheme had the effect of squelching it for the time—but that it will be allowed by the avaricious Land Company to go entirely dead cannot be believed.
“The Land Company has long had greedy eyes upon its 18,000 broad and attractive acres.”
The push to develop the Puyallup reservation for white settlement in 1884 mirrors the ongoing tensions in the Pacific Northwest over land rights, sovereignty, and the pressure of urban expansion on tribal territory. While the specific scheme to seize the land was squelched at the time, the struggle to protect the reservation's borders remained a central point of civic conflict for decades.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.