The Kalispel Were Told to Pick Their Own Lands—While Settlers Hoped They'd Leave
A federal allotment agent was expected in the Calispel Valley, where the Kalispel were to select individual plots from land they already held.
That the Calispel Indians are to be allotted lands they are now holding is the latest report from the Interior office. An agent will soon visit the valley to enable the Indians to make their selections. The people of the valley had been in hopes that the Indians would be removed to some reservation where they could be properly guarded and given school privileges, but it seems that the department did not favor removing the remaining number of Indians to take up lands that they now hold, and this section will not be any great gainer by this latest move. The objectionable features of their presence, such as the spread of contagious disease and their carelessness in starting forest fires, will continue.
“An agent will soon visit the valley to enable the Indians to make their selections.”
Federal allotment policy divided communal tribal lands into individual parcels and opened the surplus to settlers—a machine of dispossession that shaped Pend Oreille County. The Kalispel Reservation near Usk remains, but the allotment era's land loss is still felt in sovereignty and property maps. The paper's casual talk of 'objectionable' Native presence is a reminder of how local news helped normalize that loss.
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