The Colville Reservation Is Set to Be Broken Into Homesteads
A federal allotment plan would divide 1.3 million acres and assign parcels to about 2,452 Indians, opening the rest to settlement.
The diminished Colville Indian Reservation, comprising 1,300,000 acres, which is to be allotted under the homestead law after proper survey and classification, is the subject of the following remark in the annual report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, made public recently:
“During this last year a survey of the reservation has been made, of which the field work is complete, and the plats are now undergoing examination by the General Land Office. The work of allotting will be taken up during the present fiscal year and will be well under way by the summer of 1909. There are about 2,452 Indians to be allotted.”
“There are about 2,452 Indians to be allotted.”
The allotment era was designed to replace collective tribal landholding with individual homesteads, and it transferred millions of acres away from Native nations. The Colville story is a reminder that today’s reservation boundaries and land disputes were made in offices like the Commissioner of Indian Affairs’ — not by accident.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.