Federal Crackdown on Liquor Trafficking in Indian Country
The Superintendent of Indian Affairs warns traders and settlers that selling alcohol to Indigenous people or operating on reservations without a license is a federal crime punishable by seizure and jail.
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.
Office of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Olympia, Washington Territory, June 23, 1862. Information has been received at this office of the frequent and growing violation of the various provisions of the Act of Congress regulating trade and intercourse with the Indian tribes. The undersigned is unwilling to believe that such violations arise from wilfulness on the part of the numerous traders now operating in sections of the Territory hitherto and yet occupied by Indians, and in some instances upon the very land reserved to the Indians by Treaty stipulation. He rather believes that of the recent great influx of population, very many are ignorant that such laws are in force. Notice is therefore hereby given that selling, disposing, bartering or giving liquors to Indians in this Territory, or introducing or attempting to introduce the same into the Indian country, is a grave offence, punishable by fine and imprisonment by the laws of the United States. Furthermore, within any Indian Reservation, the sale of any article of traffic or merchandise without first having obtained a license from the Indian Department is also an offence of a high order, and all such liquors and goods are, by the law, subject to be seized and forfeited. Agents have been instructed by this office to renewed vigilance in securing the faithful and vigorous execution of the laws above referred to within their respective agencies, and in bringing to punishment their violators. In the event of their inability to stay the sale, manufacture, or introduction of ardent spirits, malt or intoxicating liquors, or the unlicensed trade upon or within any reserve, they are enjoined speedily to call upon the U. S. Troops within their reach to assist them in carrying out said instructions. Calvin H. Hale, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Washington Territory.
“The undersigned is unwilling to believe that such violations arise from wilfulness... he rather believes that of the recent great influx of population, very many are ignorant that such laws are in force.”
This notice reflects the fraught colonial administration of the 1860s, where federal agents struggled to assert authority over a rapidly expanding settler population. It highlights the persistent friction between U.S. jurisdictional claims over reservation land and the economic realities of frontier trade, a core theme in the dispossession of Indigenous lands in the Pacific Northwest.
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