The Yakima Reservation Will Be Opened — But Not to Everyone, and Not Yet
A land commissioner's letter says 1,200 grazing homesteads will be thrown open, all irrigable land will be allotted to Indians, and no filings will be taken until after January 1, 1911.
NORTH YAKIMA — That there will be no filing by registration on the Yakima Indian reservation is stated in a letter from Land Commissioner Fred Dennett, written to Senator Wesley L. Jones.
He says, however, that 1,200 homesteads of 160 acres each, all grazing land, will be opened to entry under the homestead law, that all irrigable lands will be allotted to Indians, and that the reports of agents will not be ready until after January 1, 1911. This is the first official information received by the Yakima Commercial club governing the reservation opening.
“All irrigable lands will be allotted to Indians and ... the reports of agents will not be ready until after January 1, 1911.”
The "opening" of the Yakima Reservation was the culmination of decades of allotment policy that carved Indigenous land into individual parcels and sold the rest. The distinction the letter draws — grazing land for settlers, irrigable land reserved to Indians — is the same fight over water and the best ground that tribes still litigate today.
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