Spokane people

“ The city of Spokane, in eastern Washington, clearly illustrates the control which physical features exert upon the settlements and industries of men. The Spokane River, soon after issuing from Cœur d'Alene Lake, flows out over the volcanic plains of Washington. In the course of a few miles it descends into a shallow cañon by a series of cascades and waterfalls. The water-power furnished by these falls has determined the position and growth of Spokane. The falls brought sawmills and manufacturing plants, and these in turn brought people and railroads. ”

“ Thus the Indians living on the J reservations in the Taholah division represent many dialect groups and include many persons with white blood. Group intermarriage and modern conditions have obscured for all but a few very old people the original dialect or group divisions and affiliations. Descendants of former Upper, Middle, and Lower Spokane now consider themselves members of one Spokane "tribe." The present-day Colville "tribe" is made up of remnants of Lakes, Sanpoil, Nespelem, Nez Perce, Moses, Columbia, Okanogan, Methow, Wenatchee, and Colville bands. ”

“ There is very little doubt that the Indians in the direction of the upper Columbia have joined the war party, as they have received their horses for pay for so doing. There are now Cayuses, Palouses, Spokanes, Okinikanes, Cœur d'Alenes, and Colville Indians, a part of each of which are now this side of the Spokane prairie. They say they have made all the whites run out of their country, and will now make all the friendly Indians do the same. They have sent to the Snakes, and a party has already joined them. What are the people of the lower country about? ”

“ Its fine, substantial, costly church, school, municipal, and other public buildings and superb private residences are indications that there is wealth in Spokane. Because of the advantages and facilities of its admirable location, surrounded by vast forests of valuable timber, fertile agricultural valleys, rich mining districts, and the traffic of seven railroads, we predict for Spokane a phenomenal future. It is destined, we are sure, at an early day to be the first city of the great Northwest. ”

“ Certainly no people in the world could be better qualified to make a little go far, to take cheerily all the inevitable discomforts of both the long journey and the new home, and to make the best use of every advantage they found or made. Only a few were going to this Spokane country, away north in Washington Territory; the rest were bound for Eastern Oregon, which is being settled up marvelously fast, when the difficulties of getting there, and of getting their produce out from there, are taken into account. ”

“ The greater part of the population of Spokane is native born, less than 20 per cent claiming foreign birth. Second-generation national groups are, however, well-represented — Irish, Germans, and Scandinavians in particular, and Italians, Greeks, Scots, and French to a lesser extent. Among racial minorities are 1,000 Negroes, most of whom are engaged in service trades; a few score Chinese in restaurants, laundries, and truck farming; a number of Indians, who wander in and out of the city; and some Japanese. ”

“ SCULPTORS have not yet chiselled the glory of the founders of Spokane, for most of the pioneers of that city, heedless of remote epitaphs, still hurry over its now "populous pavements," multiplying their wealth. Boys born in the first year of the city's incorporation have not yet reached the age of suffrage. Less than thirty years ago the settlement began with three citizens and a sawmill. It has developed into a brick and granite city of nearly fifty thousand. ”

“ They were given up by the Indians with great regret. One of the fathers said: “We have given you our hearts—our children are our hearts; but bring them back again to us before they become white men—we wish to see them once more Indians—and after that, you can make them white men, if you like.” The Kutenai boy died after two or three years at school, but some years later the Spokane boy returned to his people. He did not turn out very well.
The next spring Ross started to Spokane House to turn in his furs, and then finally to leave the fur trade. ”

“ The new officials were authorized to hold their offices until the next regular annual election, or until their successors were elected and qualified. No election was held in Spokane County owing to the failure of the newly appointed officials to qualify, organize and set in motion the county machinery. There is reason to believe that the few white people then in that vast region, dwelling chiefly in Bitter Root Valley, now in Montana, did not give unqualified approval to the legislative creation. ”

“ In token of their subjection they brought their wives, children, horses, and all portable belongings and made complete offering at the feet of their conqueror. Thus the site of the present city of Spokane became the scene of one of the most striking and [521] significant triumphs of civilized man over the aborigines of the American continent. What William Henry Harrison did at Tippecanoe for the old Northwest in scattering the allied natives under Tecumseh, Colonel Wright accomplished at Spokane Plains for the Northwest in demolishing the league of tribes under the Spokanes. ”

“ Spokane's population, in a degree greater than that of most all these new cities, consists of young men and young women from the New England and Middle States. They have enjoyed a remarkable and wholly uninterrupted period of prosperity. Some of them have grown quickly and immensely rich from real estate operations, but the great majority have yet to realize on their investments because of the large sacrifices they have made in building up the city. ”

“ It requires no very profound knowledge of Western geography, no very lengthy study of the State of Washington, to enable anyone to understand without difficulty some of the minor reasons why Spokane Falls should become a great and important city, the metropolis of a vast surrounding country. A glance at the map will show the mountain range that extends up through the Idaho Panhandle, and then along the British Columbia frontier, to the east and north of the city. ”

“ In the center of all this immense territory is located Spokane Falls, like the hub in the center of a wheel. The word immense is not used unwittingly, for the mountains and plains and valleys make up a country that in Europe would be called a nation, and in New England would form a State. Only a far-off corner of the Union, it may seem to some readers, yet there are powerful empires which possess less natural resources than it can call its own. ”

“ The dumb beast had discovered the greatest deposits of galena on the globe. The whole mountain was a mine.
Within an hour after the arrival of the sensational news at Spokane, that city's unparalleled boom began. Prospectors, engineers, and capitalists from the four corners of the Republic hurried to the new city. A railway magnate rode out on horseback to view the mountain, and within four months from the day of his visit ore was being shipped by rail to Spokane. ”

“ A century ago a few brave men blazed perilous trails through the wilderness of the far Northwest but their picturesque adventures gave no hint of the city of wealth, industry, and architectural beauty that was to rise on both banks of the Spokane cataract. ”

“ Among the city's charitable institutions are a home for the friendless (1890) , the St Joseph orphanage (1890) , St Luke's (1900) and the Marie Beard Deaconess (1896) hospitals, each having a training school for nurses, a Florence Crittenden home, and a House of the Good Shepherd. The Spokane river is a rapidly flowing stream with two falls (the upper of 60 and the lower of 70 ft.) , within the city limits, providing an estimated energy of about 35,000 horsepower at low water. ”

“ The population on the whole is relatively stable, partly perhaps because the city has drawn to it from surrounding agricultural areas farmers who have disposed of their property or who have turned it over to the management of children or renters. Drifting through the city, however, are thousands of migratory workers, mostly single men, who find seasonal employment in mines and in lumber camps and on the farms.
In the early decades of the nineteenth century, this region, the Inland Empire, was the domain of the Spokane and other Indian bands, whose control was as yet not openly challenged. ”

“ The Chamber of Commerce sent an imperative appeal to representative wheat-raisers, ranchers, lumbermen, farmers, and bade them come to Spokane to discuss the situation. They met at the Hotel Davenport, where luncheon was served in one of the magnificently appointed dining-halls of that most splendid hotel in the West.
The lion of this group of Spokane capitalists was Riesinberg, a man of German forebears, but all American in his sympathies, with a son already in the army. Riesinberg was president of a city bank and of the Chamber of Commerce. ”

“ On May 16, 1858, the force reached a point near four lakes, probably the group of which Silver Lake and Medical Lake are the chief ones, a few miles west of Spokane. Here was gathered a formidable array, Spokanes, Pend Oreilles, Cœur d'Alenes, Okanogans, and Colvilles, the hosts of the upper country. Steptoe was soldier enough to perceive that it was time for caution, and he halted for a parley. Saltese, a brawny chief of the Cœur d'Alenes, declared to him that the Indians were ready to dispute his farther progress, but that if the white men would retire the Indians would not molest them. ”

“ The bad man of melodrama is an execrable creation of fiction, whose counterpart was not [527] long tolerated in Spokane's career, and who does not seem to have made his presence felt in other sections of the West. A desperado of the early days sent word from a neighboring town that, because of some dispute, he would kill a certain Spokane citizen on sight. The community could not afford to lose an influential pioneer, and the city fathers met to consider the outlaw's menace. ”

“ This sturdy young giant of the North arises from her ashes stronger, more attractive, more substantial, than before. And there is abundant reason for solid faith in the future of Spokane Falls.
It is the metropolis of a region 200,000 square miles in extent, including 50,000 square miles of Washington, or all that portion east of the Cascade Mountains, more than half of Idaho, the northern and eastern portions of Oregon, a large part of Montana, and as much of British Columbia as would make a State as large as New York. ”

“ It was evident from every sign that we were nearing the arid belt of eastern Washington, the great semi-desert plateau that is looped in the bend of the Columbia between the mouth of the Spokane and the mouth of the Snake. The towering split crest of Mitre Rock marked the approach to the slack stretch of water backed up by the boulder barrage over which tumbles Spokane Rapids. The run through the latter was to be our real baptism; a short rapid passed a few miles above proving only rough enough to set the raft rolling in fluent undulations and throw a few light gobs of spray over her “bows.” ”

“ It will be readily seen how great an area and what vast resources Spokane Falls claims as tributary to itself in Washington. But there remains to be added the rich mineral regions of Coeur d'Alene and Kootenai. There may and will build up rival cities in the Colville and Big Bend countries, at no very distant day; but the pan-handle of Idaho does not seem adapted to such designs, at least in its northern end, therefore Spokane
seems quite sure of a share in the wealth being extracted from its mines. ”

“ The Indians about Puget Sound, more than any others, seem to have taken to the cultivation of the potato for food,
Encamping for the night, sixty miles from Colville, he found many Spokanes and Nez Percés gathered, who had heard from others that a teacher of religion was passing through the country, and they were anxious to see and listen to so great a personage. They brought with them, with wise forethought, an interpreter of their own, a young Spokane who had attended school at the Red River settlement, and who understood English fairly. ”

“ She closed with a beautiful tribute to the pioneer mothers and called upon the men to pay their debt to them next November."
Mrs. Villard, recalling here also her visit of more than a quarter of a century before, said in part: "Never could I have believed that such changes could have been wrought since that historic train. Then there was nothing at Spokane but Indians and cowboys and the beautiful Falls. I am glad you want women to share the full life of the city. 'The woman's cause is man's.' This movement is as wide as the world and will benefit men as well as women. ”

“ The law directed the commissioners to have all the county records removed to and properly housed in Spokane Falls on or before May 1, 1876. In this case the created proved greater than the creator. The county commissioners declared the legislative act non-operative, and books, papers and officials remained at Colville instead of going to the then new village of Spokane Falls, now the great and grand city of Spokane. ”

“ Prior to August 16, 1877, bands of Indians of the Spokane and other tribes occupied, for hunting and fishing, the extensive territory now comprising the eastern part of the state of Washington, in which they had not then ceded to the United States any part of their rights. In the spring of that year certain of these Indian tribes commenced hostilities against the white settlers which resulted in war with the United States, in which they were urging the Spokane tribe, then at peace, to join. ”