The Skagit Stand-off: A Survey Interrupted
When federal surveyors moved onto Skagit lands without a treaty, they were met by 150 armed warriors ready to defend their sovereignty.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
We clip the following from the Vancouver Independent: Lieut. T.W. Symons, engineering corps, on Tuesday returned to headquarters from the Skagit River, where he proceeded two weeks ago with Capt. Jocelyn’s company of the 21st Infantry, under orders to settle some trouble with the Indians there. On reaching Baker River, Lieut. Symons found the Indians had gathered about 150 warriors in anticipation of a fight. He sent word to them that he wanted to talk with them, which was acceded to. Lieut. Symons reports some able men and smart talkers among those Indians, who are the remnants of the Skagit tribes, and closely related by marriage and otherwise to the Indians in the neighborhood of Camp Chelan. They claimed the lands being surveyed had never been traded by them to the whites, and they were not going to let them go without some equivalent. They seemed to understand that once surveyed, they would be settled. After much talk and many consultations, these Indians agreed with Lieut. Symons to allow the survey to proceed as far up the Skagit as the mouth of the Nookachamps River, which is about the limit of Mr. Henry's contract. Lieut. Symons is to properly represent this case to the Indian Department. The Indians seemed to have plenty of money and arms, and were disposed to stand on their dignity, so that it would have been very easy to have kicked up a big row. All is safe now until another spring.
“They claimed the lands being surveyed had never been traded by them to the whites, and they were not going to let them go without some equivalent.”
This 1880 standoff underscores the central role that land surveys played in the rapid, often non-consensual dispossession of Indigenous territory in the Pacific Northwest. Today, these same river corridors are the focus of intense struggles over environmental management and tribal treaty rights, reflecting the persistence of the sovereignty claims the Skagit people asserted over a century ago.
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