Colville Agency Indigenous Displacement
Newspaper reports indicate that Indigenous people at the Colville Agency in Washington Territory are being actively forced off their ancestral lands by encroaching white settlers.
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.
The Coleville Indian Agency item reported that the Upper Spokanes would not work. It said they drank too much whiskey.
The same report noted great immorality among the women.
“are being crowded out of the valley by the whites.”
This brief, devastating entry documents the systemic dispossession of Indigenous peoples in Eastern Washington during the late 19th century. It serves as a stark historical marker for the era of the Dawes Act and the forced land privatization policies that reshaped the state.
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