Agent Presses Wenatchee Indians to Take Their Allotment Money
A government agent asks every Indian on the Wenatchee fishery reservation to claim a share of the sale proceeds — but Chief Balnulk refuses unless a new reservation is set aside, and most of his band follows him.
Word has been received in Washington from the agent in charge of the Wenatchee fishery reservation, asking for the names of all Indians entitled to a pro rata of the proceeds resulting from the Wenatchee fishery reservation sale. Nearly every Indian in the vicinity was seen, but not more than half of them were willing to accept their portion of the money. Chief Tilix and his band, about thirty Indians, handed in names, but the remainder, under old Chief Balnulk, would not yield unless their chief would accept. This he would not do. Chief Balnulk wants either another reservation set aside for their benefit, or the whole sum resulting from the sale, about $3,000. The reservation which they request in lieu of the Wenatchee fishery is now occupied by settlers, who have good improved farms.
“Chief Balnulk wants either another reservation set aside for their benefit, or the whole sum resulting from the sale, about $3,000.”
The Wenatchee fishery allotment fight is a small window onto the larger machinery of Indigenous dispossession: land sold, proceeds divided, and a chief refusing to sign away his people's future for cash. The demand for replacement land — refused because settlers already held it — is the same zero-sum logic that shaped reservation boundaries across Washington.
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