Tensions Over Land Allotment on the Yakima Reservation
Agent Thomas Priestley reports on the progress of indigenous agricultural development while highlighting conflicts over land ownership and assimilation.
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.
Captain Thomas Priestley, agent of the Yakima Indian reservation, has just made his annual report to the secretary of the Interior. It embraces the following points: There are 277 children of school age on the reservation, of which number 126 are attending school. In the reservation are 240,000 acres of arable land. It is estimated that 9,076 Indians are attached to the reservation, but the agent states that his census shows but 1,676. The Indians are engaged in stock raising and farming, and, with the exception of a few old men, are self-supporting. In the matter of civilization they are progressive, as is shown by their desire to leave their blanket life and secure houses in which to live. They have 26,000 acres under fence, many Indians alone having as high as 1,000 acres under fence, and trouble is likely to arise when an attempt is made, under the allotment act, to induce these men to relinquish all but 160 acres. Captain Priestley suggests that white men be no longer allowed to reside on the reservation simply because they have Indian wives, and says that the Indians themselves object to this.
“Trouble is likely to arise when an attempt is made, under the allotment act, to induce these men to relinquish all but 160 acres.”
This report highlights the early, coercive stages of the Dawes Act, a federal policy intended to break up communal indigenous landholdings in favor of individual allotments—a precursor to the modern jurisdictional and land-rights disputes still faced by the Yakama Nation today.
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