where the salmon run - Washington Secretary of State

spirit of the father 15
Stevens neared Nisqually Country on an errand for the U.S.
government in the winter of 1854. Enticed by the Donation Land Act
and its promise of 320 acres for white men, non-Indians had been
encroaching on Indian land. Stevens had come to do away with
Indian ownership and open the West to American settlers.
Smoke from burning fires hung in the air at the council ground at
Medicine Creek. Bands and tribes, including the Puyallup, Nisqually,
Steilacoom, and Squaxin, greeted the visitors in anticipation of lavish
gifts and a great feast. When the Indian leaders were presented instead
with molasses and tobacco, they were taken aback.
Council convened. Benjamin Shaw read the treaty terms in Chinook
Jargon, a nineteenth-century trade language with a vocabulary of
three hundred words. The Indians would be paid for their land and
moved to reservations. They would maintain their fishing rights,
however, in usual and accustomed places, even those located outside
reservation boundaries. It is highly unlikely the Indians understood
what Stevens proposed. While whites sought prized acreage in the
name of the United States, the tribes valued their hunting and fishing
rights. They wanted to live freely on their land, as they had for
thousands of years.
The meeting broke for the night, and by the next day, December
26, 1854, the deal was done. Sixty-two leaders signed the Treaty of
Medicine Creek (or She-Nah-Num), the first in a series of agreements
ceding Indian land in present-day Washington to the United States.
The Treaty of Medicine Creek was subsequently ratified by Congress
on March 3, 1855.
Assessments of Stevens’s character run the gamut, from a dedicated
soldier carrying out the wishes of his government to “a man who
would stoop to any method to accomplish his objectives, with his
ambitions overcoming all scruples.” History would later dub Stevens
a “young man in a hurry” for his fast-paced excursions across the territory.
At the close of his treaty negotiations with Pacific Northwest
tribes, the governor’s real estate deals on behalf of the United States,
totaled sixty-four million acres. He had brokered ten treaties in all,