Col. Wright's Column Drives Spokane Fighters Across the Plains
An 1858 campaign report describes a running fight on the Spokane Plains—and the violent logic of dispossession behind it.
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.
Col. Wright's command moved out from Wilbur and encamped on the margin of a lake in a thinly timbered, broken country that opened onto a prairie. The Indians, to the number of several hundred, were seen moving rapidly in various directions, apparently making for the hills beyond; their object was not understood. The troops were extended through the prairie, and the Indians were driven into the hills and ravines by the skirmishers and over the open ground by the dragoons. A mounted body of Indians formed a long, thin line on the north bank and moved forward; whenever an opportunity offered they charged down upon our men. The Indians' killed and wounded were reported numerous, but the exact loss was not known. Our own loss was comparatively small. The expedition continued, and the engagement was regarded as an important blow in the campaign against the Indians of the Spokane country.
“The Indians were driven into the hills and ravines by the skirmishers, and passed over the open prairie by the dragoons.”
The Spokane Plains campaign was part of the U.S. Army's coercive opening of Washington Territory to settlement, a process that dispossessed the Spokane, Coeur d'Alene, Palouse and other Indigenous nations. The report's language of "driving" Indians across the prairie is a reminder that the state's growth was not empty land but contested ground. Modern tribal sovereignty struggles still carry the consequences of these 1858 campaigns.
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