The Price of a Homeland: One Cow, One Wagon, One Plough
Chief Moses and his delegation come home through Spokane Falls with the government's terms in hand: surrender the country, remove to the Colville reservation, and be paid out in oxen, harness and farm tools.
Chief Moses and his companions, who went on to Washington to have their difficulties adjusted, reached Spokane Falls at 11:02 Friday night, and departed for Fort Spokane this (Saturday) morning. We delay the press to publish the following official report of the result of the conference with the government authorities:
Report of conference held July 7 inst. with Chief Moses and other Indians of the Colville and Spokane reservations:
In the conference with Chief Moses and his people an agreement was entered into, a copy of which is appended, the substance of which is as follows:
First—That the government will provide for the Indians, provided they surrender all claims to the country they now occupy and remove to the Colville reservation.
Second—It is agreed to allow the Indians to remain for one year on the lands where they now live, and to be furnished with supplies in the meantime, before removal.
Third—That each head of a family shall be furnished with one cow, one yoke of oxen, one wagon, one plough, one harrow, one scythe, one hoe, and such other agricultural implements as may be necessary.
Further, a tract of land to each head of a family or male adult, in the manner and within the time prescribed. In the event of their removing to the Colville reservation within two years, they will be provided with farm implements as they may require, provided they surrender all claims and remove to the Colville reservation.
All of which is respectfully submitted.
H. M. Teller, Secretary of the Interior.
[Executed by their marks:] Moses X; Tonasket X; and others. Interpreters for the Indians; Interpreter for the Government; Captain, Infantry.
“That each head of a family shall be furnished with one cow, one yoke of oxen, one wagon, one plough, one harrow, one scythe, one hoe, and such other agricultural implements as may be necessary.”
The Colville Confederated Tribes still hold the reservation Chief Moses was pressed to accept, and the allotment-in-severalty bargain printed here is the paper trail of a dispossession that redrew the whole Inland Northwest. The government's schedule of goods — a cow, a yoke of oxen, a plough — reads now as the literal price it set on a homeland.
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