88 Washington INTHEPACIFICNORTHWEST THE TIME 1850–1883 ¾ PEOPLE TO KNOW Patrick Clark David Douglas Ulysses Grant Chin Gee Hee Robert Hume John James Chief Joseph Kamiakin Chief Leschi Washington David Maynard James Monaghan Chief Moses George Pickett Chief Sealth Isaac Stevens Sarah Winnemucca Erskine Wood Henry Yesler ¾ PLACES TO LOCATE China Japan Ireland Canada Alaska California Idaho Montana Nevada Issaquah Olympia Pasco Seattle Tacoma The Nez Perce were a plateau tribe who lived 1862 Homestead Act gives settlers 160 acres Walla Walla in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Their leaders were friendly to white settlers and of land for $200. Washington, D.C. some joined the Christian faith. Like other 1854 Governor Stevens’ first 1859 Oregon Colville Reservation Indian peoples, the Nez Perce were forced Indian treaties are signed in becomes a state. Yakama Reservation from their lands onto reservations. western Washington. M ¾ WORDS TO TIMELINE 1850 1860 L L UNDERSTAND 1850 Donation 1855 Governor Stevens holds a 1861– decade Land Act gives meeting with plateau tribes near 1865 white men 320 Walla Walla. Treaties are signed Civil Kanaka acres of free and reservations are determined. War menial land and their 1855–1858 Yakama war wives another retaliate 320 acres. 1853 Washington Territory is separated witness tree from the Oregon Territory. It contains parts of Idaho and Montana. 89 CC h h a a p p t t e e r r Life in Territory 66 1869 First transcontinen- tal railroad is joined in the 1877 Chief Joseph 1882 U.S. Congress Utah desert; it did not go surrenders to the passes the Chinese through Washington. U.S. Army and gives Exclusion Act. Wagon train era ends. his famous speech. M M 1870 1880 L L 1867 Robert Hume 1878 Timber and 1883 The builds the first Stone Act is used to Northern Pacific salmon cannery in provide forest land to Railroad joins Washington. timber companies. Seattle to the cities of the Midwest. Tracks meet in Montana. 90 Washington INTHEPACIFICNORTHWEST Property Lines and Boundaries he early years of territorial settlement were years of establishing boundaries. TAmerican and British boundaries had to be established. The Washington Territory had to be separated from the Oregon Territory. Cities had to be laid out, home- steads marked, and maps drawn. How was this done? In order to plot and map the land hold- ings for legal title, the land was surveyed, he Donation then marked on a grid pattern. That pattern T Land Claim was based on latitude and longitude, and Act of 1850 stated was divided into townships and sections. that each white • A township was a square six miles in each direction. male citizen over Government survey parties mapped the West. • A township was divided into thirty-six sec- Trains of pack mules took surveyors into remote eighteen years of tions. areas where wagons couldn’t go. age could claim • Each section was one mile each direction, 320 acres of free or 640 acres. map a quarter section he wanted to claim. • Each section was numbered. land. If he had a After going out to see the land, he marked • Sections were divided into quarter sec- the corners. Corners could be marked by wife, they could tions of 160 acres each. driving posts in the ground, or by marking a claim twice as A homesteader checked with the land witness tree. A witness tree was the near- much land. office in the nearest town and located on a est tree to a corner. A homesteader sliced away a piece of bark and carved the town- ship and section number with a knife. After marking the land, the homesteader ACTIVITY went back to register the claim at the land office. In order to make his claim valid, he 6 mile square township also had to advertise it in a newspaper so Using this map, anyone else claiming that land could chal- find 160 acres in 654321 lenge him. During the homestead era, the SW Quarter newspapers were published throughout the of Section 16. 78910 11 12 West because land claim advertisements L were a source of profit for the newspapers. 1 square mile 18 17 16 15 14 13 section N 19 20 21 22 23 24 WHATDOYOUTHINK? 320 What problems might have occurred 80 30 29 28 27 26 25 when people tried to choose pieces of 160 40 land in the vast wilderness? What 31 32 33 34 35 36 made some land more valuable or desirable than other land? LIFEINWASHINGTONTERRITORY 91 Pioneers spun wool Everyday Pioneer Life fibers into yarn. Then they wove the yarn urviving on a pioneer homestead was into cloth. They made difficult. Chas Ross, a young man in candles from melted animal fat. SPierce County, said: Pioneering here meant clearing land, hunting, fishing, and driving and feeding cattle. In this little home our family spent the most strenuous win- ter of our existence. That was the ter- rible winter of 1861-62. That winter opened with the freezing over of the Kelsey Congor, in Cowlitz County, said: Columbia River, which cut us off We seldom had coffee—we used from the outside world. Then on top brown peas instead. The first settlers of this the snow began to fall and suffered from lack of food. I’ve heard fell to the depth of four feet, then it William Whittle say that when he would settle and freeze. For fear we went to work, many times all he had would run out of matches, we kept in his lunch were some cold boiled the fire burning all night. potatoes and sometimes not even salt. Disease Fun and Games Many people came west for the clean air, Clara Gray was a teenager in Spokane in clean water, and mild climate they thought 1879. She told about getting ready for a would give them good health. In the mid- neighborhood dance: 1800s doctors did not know that germs When I started to dress for the dance caused disease. Most people thought sick- I found that the dress I wanted to ness was caused by bad odors such as the wear was frozen fast to the side of smell from sewage or rotting garbage. the house, and it took me quite a Eva Brown, a girl in Waterville, said, “To while to thaw it loose with a hot be sick was unfortunate for the patient. iron. I had hung my spare clothing There was no doctor. The neighbors did on nails against the rough boards. what they could and the patient either got Two fiddlers played at the dance, well or died.” and a collection was taken up to get money to build a schoolhouse. Food One boy on Whidbey Island remembered: “Horseback riding in the summer and skiing in the winter were the stand-by As late as 1866 pork—fresh, salted, sports. I made my skis from barrel staves. or smoked—was about the only I got about all over the country on them,” meat other than venison that was one pioneer remembered. obtainable, except that occasionally Erskine Wood wrote about a game he a farmer would kill a beef and share played with the Indian youths. They used the meat with his neighbors, who little whips to spin three or four egg-shaped later would return an equal quan- stones. “They would start the rocks spin- tity of beef after butchering their cat- ning on the ice with their hands and then tle. Flour, for years, was almost whip them like everything and they would unobtainable. spin as good as a top.” 92 Washington INTHEPACIFICNORTHWEST LINKING THE PAST TO THE PRESENT Compare the games you play today with those of pioneer times. How have activities changed? Newspapers The first newspaper in Washington was the Columbian, first published in 1852 in Olympia. Because the territory was so spread out, many people did not get a chance to The lifestyle of the read it regularly. “President Lincoln was assas- Nez Perce people, Pioneer–Indian Conflict sinated a year before I heard of it,” said including children, Governor Stevens’ Plan Barney Owsley, a freight packer. changed forever when the white ollowing the murders of the Whitmans settlers came. Mail Service in 1847, there were three decades of conflict between settlers and the There was no mail delivery in rural areas F native peoples called the Cayuse War. until the twentieth century. Mail might come The U.S. Army finally prevailed, and Indians and might not,” one pioneer remembered. s part of the were confined to smaller and less desirable Getting mail to the East meant sending it Atreaties, lands. on the Columbia River by steamboat to By the 1880s, most Indians had been Wallula, where a pony express rider picked Indians had to forced against their will to move to reserva- it up and raced overland on the Mullan agree to stop tions. Some Indians were paid a little for the Road to Montana. In Montana, the letter stealing, buying, land. Some were promised they could retain was put on a steamboat headed down the and selling hunting and fishing rights. Most Indians, Missouri River to St. Louis. From there it however, lost their land and their traditional was sent eastward by boat, stage, or rail- Indian slaves. way of living. road. Sometimes letters were sent aboard What events led up to this drastic change ships that had to round the tip of South for the Native Americans? As Secretary of America before reaching the East Coast. Indian Affairs, Governor Stevens planned to Letters could take a year to reach their make treaties with Indian tribes, pay them destination.