Month: May 2014

February 1861

After the treaties were signed around here, settling outstanding tribal land claims, and legally opening settlement in our region, we went to war. The terms of the treaties didn’t match up with the expectations of the tribes. The small non-native communities contracted into bunkhouses. Hundreds formed units to both defend their farms and towns and to seek out Indians to kill.

Eventually, the Puget Sound War petered out, Indian leaders were tried, hung and murdered.

But, most importantly to the civil leaders here, we had spent money. Someone needed to pay.

The debate over the war debt of the Puget Sound War is an interesting one that gets to the nature of our early settlement here.

If it was a war, then Indian leaders like Leschi should not have been hung for murder in the years after the conflict. You can’t commit murder if you’re a soldier in a war.

Also, if it was a war, roving bands of whites should not have spent the years following the war looking for Indians to kill, carrying writs from local courts. Certain judges apparently thought the Puget Sound War wasn’t a war, or else there wouldn’t be murderers. Just veterans.

But, the instructions given to our congressional delegate Issac Stevens (who as governor led the war effort) in the late 1850s was to get federal repayment for our war debts. It was a war.

The Senate acknowledged the existence of a war, when they eventually passed $3 million appropriate in 1861. Obviously, that money was needed for another war.

Its funny that that war, had a similar post war debate. Should the leader of the confederacy be tried? Was the Civil War a real war? If they were leaders of a real nation, then of course not. You can’t put a national executive on trial for leading his country in war. But, if they were merely terrorist leaders, taking charge illegally of a portion of a whole country, then of course, put them on trial.

Obviously, if we zero in on the case of Jefferson Davis (the President of the apparent Confederate States) we see a lot of nuance. If he’s on trial, what happens if the federal government gets a bad result? He’s found innocent? The constitutionality of secession is secured? In the end, it was better to just release him and leave the questions unanswered.

But, because Jefferson Davis didn’t join Leschi at the gallows, the Civil War was a war. Leschi was the Indian symbol to white Americans of the tribal cause. He was hung because there were enough people in charge in the territory that couldn’t fathom him being anything other than a murderer. But, in their own split minds, they saw their service as soldiers. So, they sent Stevens to congress to get money for war debts.

It wasn’t until 1875 that the federal government really got around to putting the war stamp on the Puget Sound War, when they spent a much smaller sum ($50,000) to put the war debts to bed.

We really did have a war it. It was asymmetrical. It wasn’t pretty. We don’t have battlefield sites, instead we have gallows and blockhouse sites. And, for years people here and far away didn’t agree it really existed.

And, ten years ago, during the trial in which the historical court exonerated Leschi, lawyers asked Captain Paul Robson why the U.S. Army thought Leschi shouldn’t have been hung. Because, we don’t hang soldiers.

Local arts activists lobbied for and built the Washington Center for the Performing Arts.

Local athletic boosters brought arguably the largest sporting event ever to Olympia.

Local political activists changed the government at city hall.

The first part of the 1980s was a big time in Olympia. Things were happening, people were getting things done. But, why?

I might just be cherry picking historical events, pointing to them and saying “hey look, something was different here,” so correct me if I’m wrong. But, it really does seem that those years in the early 1980s were a time when things changed around here.

One simple reason could have been the influx of new residents in Thurston County. If you look at Olympia’s population alone, the early 1980s was a time of steady growth. But, in broader Thurston County, population took off in the 1970s.

This population increase must have had an impact on our local culture. I wouldn’t assume a fundamental change, but certainly making people and organizations more active, more open to change and new projects.

Now, I’m just spit-balling, but I’d assume that a bunch of these new residents came to take state jobs. I’ve read that state government (during the Dan Evans administration) expanded greatly in the 1970s, taking on more roles. And, because of a 1950s era lawsuit, much of this growth took place in Thurston County.

These are mostly notes to a new inquiry. But, if someone were to write a new history of Thurston County, focusing on the 1970s and 80s might be a nice time to highlight.

To struggle to protect treaty rights has been heavy on my mind this week. It is worth pointing out how long this struggle actually is.

This letter to the Puget Sound Courier (Steilacoom’s paper) is a pointed attack at Governor Stevens during the Puget Sound War. The anonymous writer points out that the execution of the war and the removal of Indians to internment camps violated the terms of the treaties that were just signed. Like newspapers of that era, the Courier was picking sides in a political battle against Gov. Stevens.

But, the letter also marks the beginning of the treaty rights struggle that continued, sometimes in secret, through to today.

…let it be remembered that the Indian Department in Washignton territory, negogiated a treaty, forwarded it to Washington city for ratification, received that ratification, and violated, all within the short space of a year.

I wrote about one episode in Oyster Light (here’s just that chapter), in which the Boldt Decision almost happened 50 years early when a young Olympia lawyer joined a coordinated legal effort to try treaty rights in court.

The treaty rights struggle, the tense relationship between these governments and our communities, goes back throughout our history. Its is impossible to understand the history of our region without thinking hard about it.

To that end, I would highly suggest the Katie Gale. I’ve read a lot of pieces, books and essays about treaty rights, tribal history and natural resources management. And, obviously Cecelia Svinth Carpenter is the original gold standard.

But, Katie Gale takes a perpendicular track to other things I’ve read. It tracks the life of of a women literally of the first post-treaty Indian generation. She was raised knowing only the world Scorpion described the launch of.

The book can sometimes slog down into details that don’t move the narrative forward. We set the scene so long, it seems like we’re taking in the scenery rather than listening to a story. But, those details really only remind us that our history is really complicated.

And, it is very local. This all happened right here. Someone who was central to these stories walked the same place you walked. Scorpion, Issac Stevens and Katie Gale have all been on the same streets as you.

One little detail. But, I can admit when I’m wrong. Here’s one passage in a history I wrote of the formation of Capitol Lake:

Depending on the source, one of two things then happened. Either the state capitol committee rejected a lake altogether or they accepted the Olmsted’s earlier limited version.

In the late 20s, Wilder and White and the Olmsted firm participated in a back and forth over the landscaping plan, with the state capitol committee in the middle. In one telling, the result was that all waterfront improvements (including Capitol Lake) were written out of the landscaping plan (Johnston, 91).

According to another Capitol Campus historian, Mark Epstein, Capitol Lake was retained in the 1920s landscaping plan, but in the form of Olmsted’s modest saltwater tidal pond rather than an aggressively dammed estuary (Epstein, 67).

Also, ten years after he first proposed it, damming the Deschutes apparently was not in the front of Carlyon’s mind. As Wilder, White and the Olmsted firm debated landscaping plans that could have included a lake, Carlyon wrote an essay about the vision and construction of the capitol group. Lacking from the essay is a single mention of a lake (Carylon, 1928).

Even though it was rejected in 1916 and was an afterthought in Carlyon’s mind by 1928, the lake project did not go away.

This passage had to do with the late 1920s when the capitol builders were putting the finishing touches on the original capitol group. It was also just about 10 years before the successful (and locally originated) effort to build Capitol Lake.

From what I  found in a 1929 Seattle Times piece, I wasn’t totally correct:

A small difference I suppose. But, a big enough difference to add another sentence to that section in the piece I linked to above. It was a proposed lake. It had been proposed in 1911 as part of a locally funded package of civic improvements. Again in 1915 by local politicians as a solution to transportation problems. It was also proposed in 1897 as a grand freshwater port scheme:

It was proposed a lot, but it wasn’t the centerpiece of a grand plan for the capitol campus. It was an old idea by 1911 that had been kicked around and recycled several times in various forms of urban renewal and natural resources destruction.