A Pension for the Men Who Fought the 1855–56 'Indian War'
A Vancouver man leads a campaign to pension surviving white volunteers of the Inland Northwest's 1855–56 war, a conflict the article ties to the Stevens County gold rush and Indigenous dispossession.
The Washington legislature will be asked to pension the few surviving Indian fighters of the war of 1855–56. A. J. Lewis, of Vancouver, is at the head of the movement. He claims to have killed the first Indian in that war. The discovery of gold in Stevens County just previous to the war brought in a great influx of miners. This precipitated the war with Indians. The war was very strenuous, nearly 700 whites being killed and 170 injured. The cost was about $5,000,000. Gen. Philip Sheridan, afterward famous as the greatest cavalry leader in the world, served as a lieutenant during this war. There are a few of the survivors of the war residing in Stevens County at the present time.
“The Washington legislature will be asked to pension the few surviving Indian fighters of the war of 1855–56.”
The article treats a settler militia pension as ordinary veterans’ business, but the war it commemorates was part of the dispossession of Indigenous nations in the Inland Northwest. Modern debates over monuments and public memory still turn on who is honored—and whose land the 'pioneers' settled.
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