The Gold Rush That Was Coming for the Colville Reservation
A Spokane prospector returns from the northern mineral belt with news of rich rock—and a prediction that the Indians will not long keep their land.
Early in May a Mr. Knox, a resident of this place, started out on a protracted and exhaustive prospecting tour through the country extending to the north, with an ample outfit to remain on the march all summer if necessary. He returned this week after visiting every point where mineral has been discovered. His trip led him through the Okanogan country, the Kootenai region, far up into British Columbia and the Colville mining belt. Many points were visited where the indications of gold and silver exist, but he considers the richest rock found this side at Colville, where a number of claims are being worked. Knox intends to return at once to the latter place and take a claim, having explicit confidence in the value of the ledges.
He also informs us that some rich rock has been discovered on the Colville reservation, and it is the opinion of old prospectors that the section soon to be occupied by Moses is bound to be a great mining territory. If the precious metal is found to be as rich as reported the Indians will not be permitted to enjoy their newly acquired property any length of time. The traveler further states that some of the very best land for agricultural purposes is to be seen north of the Columbia river, and is very enthusiastic in his description of its extent and character.
Should the mines between this city and Colville, which are being worked now to some extent, prove to produce gold and silver in sufficient quantities to stamp them as valuable, the rush to the new mineral fields next spring will be equal to that which marks an epoch in the history of California, Nevada, Colorado and Arizona. And we sit back in our arm-chair and give birth to a great big hope that it may all be true.
“If the precious metal is found to be as rich as reported the Indians will not be permitted to enjoy their newly acquired property any length of time.”
The prospector's report is a booster's dream, but its most telling line is the casual certainty that Native people would be pushed aside once gold was confirmed. That logic helped drive the late-nineteenth-century mineral rush into the Colville country and the broader dispossession of Inland Northwest tribes; the tension between resource extraction and Indigenous sovereignty is still live today.
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