The Puyallup Reservation Goes on the Auction Block
In a Tacoma storefront, commissioners began selling off 1,000 acres of Puyallup Indian land — and a brick company snatched up the valuable clay first.
TACOMA, May 1.—Special. The first of the lands on the Puyallup Indian reservation were placed on sale this morning at the Bostwick block at 10 o'clock. In the space of two hours the Puyallup commissioners sold over $10,000 worth of land.
The sale took place in the vacant store room in the Bostwick block at 7th and C streets, and about 150 persons were present. All the commissioners attended to the sale personally. Anderson was the auctioneer, while Commissioner Alexander put down the names and amounts of the successful bidders, and the commissioners received receipts.
One of the heaviest bidders was F. H. Goss Co., the Union Brick Works. This company bought all the valuable clay deposits in the tracts that were offered for sale. A total of 1,000 acres were offered for sale. There will be a sale at the same place every ten days until further notice. In a great many instances the land brought more than the appraised valuation.
“In a great many instances the land brought more than the appraised valuation.”
The auction of Puyallup tribal land inside a downtown Tacoma storefront was one act in a long dispossession that scattered the Puyallup people from their valley. The tribe persists today as the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, and this sale of 1,000 acres — much of it to a brick company for its clay — reads like an early chapter in the region's still-unsettled argument over who owns the ground beneath Seattle and Tacoma.
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