In late 1854, the Nisqually and neighboring tribes signed a treaty with the United States at Medicine Creek in which “The right of taking fish, at all usual and accustomed grounds and stations, is further secured to said Indians.” This was the first time the United States guaranteed fishing rights in a treaty (and the basis for later court decisions). Early the next year, 1855, other tribes signed a treaty at Point Elliot also guaranteeing fishing rights. Settlers violated the various treaties enacted during this period and continued to settle on Indian lands. The Chinook Jargon, a trade language (see CHINOOK), was used in negotiations, and the Indians failed to realize the extent of their loss of land. The Nisqually rebelled when the Washington territorial governor Isaac Stevens ordered their relocation from grasslands to a reservation on a forested bluff. Chief Leschi led his own warriors as well as militants from other area tribes in a series of raids, nearly taking Fort Steilacoom on the southern end of Puget Sound. While Leschi led the rebellion west of the Cascade Range, Kamiakin of the YAKAMA was the principal war chief to the east, where the conflict, although it involved a number of tribes, became known as the Yakama War. In January 1856, Leschi commanded a force of some 1,000 warriors of allied tribes in an offensive on the settlement of Seattle. A ship anchored in Puget Sound managed to drive off the attackers with its cannon. Meanwhile, the Duwamish under Seathl and other tribes remained at peace.
After defeat, Leschi fled to the Yakama, yet because they had recently agreed to a truce, they would only accept him in the tribe as a slave, and he remained at large. Settlers sent a cousin of Leschi to trick the chief into surrendering with a guarantee of his safety. That
November, he was seized by the army as he approached Fort Steilacoom. In a trial, Leschi was sentenced to death for killing Colonel A. Benton Moses of the territorial militia during fighting. The army hangman, however, refused to carry out the order, believing him an innocent man who had only killed as a combatant in battle. Leschi was then taken to Olympia. After a second trial in 1858, he was executed by civil authorities.
In 1857, a reservation was established for the Nisqually in their homeland; in 1918, all reservation lands on the east side of the Nisqually River were made part of Fort Lewis, an army post. The Nisqually Indian Community is presently centered at Yelm in Thurston County, Washington; some descendants share the Puyallup and Squaxin Island Reservations with Puyallup, Squaxon, and other Salishans.
World History
