Medicine Creek to Fox Island: Cadastral Scams and Contested Domains

Abstract

Nu Ann M.Reddick andCaryI. Collins Medicine Creek to Fox Island Cadastral SeamsandContested Domains Rising black against the horizon and fleetingly visible from the interstate highway that runs along the southern edge of Puget Sound north and east of Olympia, Washington, an old **Douglas fir snag isnearly obscured by the riparian trees and brush. The Treaty Tree stands at the place where on a dreary Christmas Day in 1854Governor Isaac I. Stevens negotiated terms for theMedicine Creek treatywith some seven hundred Nisqually, Puyallup, Squaxin, Stei lacoom, and other landowners whose territory embraced four thousand square miles. Here was born a bitter conflict that erupted when Indian peoples in Washington and Oregon territories confronted the power of theU.S. government as it sought tomove the Indians out of theway of white settlement.1 The treaty council was held near a stream known to theNisqually as She-nah-nam, referring to a sacred space where shamans could go to de rive their power from thewater. Translated by theAmericans asMedicine Creek, it was also called McAllister Creek because itflowed north into the Sound past a sawmill and cabin on land claimed by an early emigrant, JamesMcAllister. West of the creek, hidden in thewoods opposite the site chosen for the negotiations, was a Nisqually village; and to the southeast towered the great snow-covered mountain that the Indians called Tacobet and theAmericans renamed Rainier. Although the settlers represented a minority of the territorial population, their dreams of expansion were already manifest in the growing number of farms scattered along primitive roads between the tiny towns of Olympia and Steilacoom.2 Medicine Creek was the first of seven treaties negotiated by Stevens in his role as Indian superintendent in present-day Washington, Idaho, and 374 OHQ vol. 106, no. 3 ? 2005 Oregon Historical Society Universityof Washington Libraries,Special Collections, A. Curtis 30562 A groveofdying firs isreflected inthestill watersof Medicine Creek.In thisimagethey still marked the historic place where a treaty council was held on Christmas in 1854 between American officials and theNative peoples who lived in the southern region ofPuget Sound. Montana. Combined with another eight treaties completed by Oregon's superintendent of Indian affairs, Joel Palmer, and three that Stevens and Palmer negotiated together,most ? but not all ? of the Indian peoples of the Pacific Northwest were brought into a complex legal relationship with theU.S. government. Not only did the eighteen treaties determine what lands the Indians relinquished and what they retained, but they also laid the cornerstone forNative sovereignty and self-determination ? that is, the ability of Indians in the Pacific Northwest to execute control over their own affairs, land, and property through self-government functioning under tribal laws and leaders aided by the protection of theAmerican gov ernment. The treaties initiated what is today the basis of tribal identity and legal existence. In the 1850s, however, the federal government regarded the ReddickandCollinsy Medicine Creek toFox Island 375 treaties and reservations as provisional, themeans bywhich Indians could be organized and contained until their land was allotted and people were assimilated. The one-sided and at times arbitrary nature of theMedicine Creek negotiations and the hostilities that followed served notice from the outset that anything close toNative sovereignty and self-determina tionwould be a long time in coming and achieved only through grueling struggle at a heavy cost.3 The remnants of this story are paper, ink, and microfilm ? scattered letters, maps, and reports gathered from theNational Archives and Records Administration and various other libraries and repositories. The original transcription of theMedicine Creek council minutes no longer exists and later renditions are only incomplete abstracts of the primary source.With little hard evidence on which to rely, irreconcilable opinions have trans formed the history of theMedicine Creek council and itsaftermath into a disjointed collage of observations, assertions, and interpretations, render ing it almost impossible for researchers to discern a rational pattern of events and decisions. By using letters, surveys, and maps drawn at the time of the negotiations and a little-known account of the Fox Island council of 1856, along with Native testimonies and oral tradition, we can project possible scenarios thatmight shed light on theMedicine Creek treaty and itsconsequences, which are...