The Murder That Made Washington Decide Who Counted as Tribal
In 1903 the state Supreme Court upheld Tommy Santiago Howard's manslaughter conviction for killing Kate Arquette on the Puyallup Reservation, ruling that because he had no tribal ties, state court—not federal court—had jurisdiction.
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OLYMPIA, Nov. 30. — Tommy Santiago Howard must serve his 20-year sentence for the murder of Kate Arquette on the Puyallup Indian Reservation in June 1902. The Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the lower court today.
Howard was charged with the crime of murder in the first degree, but the jury found him guilty of manslaughter, and he was sentenced to serve 20 years in the penitentiary.
Howard is an Indian, and one of the principal questions presented to the Supreme Court was whether the state courts had jurisdiction to try the case.
It was contended by Howard's attorneys that the federal statute gives the United States courts exclusive jurisdiction to try and punish Indians on the reservation. (23 Stat. Ch. 341, 362; Sec. 9, 355.) The Supreme Court holds that this federal statute refers only to Indians belonging to and sustaining relations to some tribe. Howard's mother was a Nisqually Indian, his father a Victorian, and Howard had lived part of his life in Oregon, and worked for Gentry Brothers' shows, and at the time the crime was committed was residing with his mother and other relatives in Kitsap County. As he sustained no tribal relations with the Puyallup Indians, on whose reservation the crime was committed, the Supreme Court finds that the state courts had jurisdiction. The point decided seems to be an entirely new one in the courts of the United States, there being no reported case where an Indian without tribal relations has been tried for a crime committed within a reservation.
In addition to the point above mentioned, which was not raised in the trial court, Howard's attorneys cited as errors several instructions delivered by the judge to the jury. The instructions are sustained in all particulars by the Supreme Court and the decision is affirmed.
The crime with which Howard was charged was a very brutal one. On the night of June 20, 1902, he aroused Marcellus Spot, an aged Indian with whom Kate Arquette lived, and after securing entrance to the house drove Spot away and then, to accomplish another crime, choked the woman until she died. Spot and Howard had two encounters during the night, in which Howard tried to stab Spot, but the latter successfully defended himself with an ax handle, though receiving a number of minor injuries.
“The point decided seems to be an entirely new one in the courts of the United States, there being no reported case where an Indian without tribal relations has been tried for a crime committed within a reservation.”
The ruling turned on a narrow test of belonging: Howard's lack of formal tribal relations let the state claim jurisdiction over a crime on reservation land. That same tangle of tribal, federal and state authority still shapes how violence on reservations is prosecuted today, and Native women remain disproportionately affected by violent crime. The case is a reminder that legal definitions of who belongs have life-and-death consequences.
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