Territorial History, Reservations, Treaties & Mining
Exploring the Pacific Northwest Prior to Statehood: Tribal Homelands
The Spanish first land-based venture outside of Nootka Bay was to establish gold mining (ad)ventures on the Island. After otter and beaver furs, mining was the driving force of explorers who wished to “harvest the riches and return to home.” These Europeans (though some were Chinese) explored the hills and valleys trespassing through every Indigenous camp. It is no surprise that
Artifact Spanish Coin was found around Bonhoeffer Gardens abandoned (with the building of the I-5 Freeway in 1972) creek bed. Miners walked everywhere and they carried rifles. It was miners who perpetrated the massacre of Willamette Valley Indigenous, it was miners who spurred the payment of $5/head (not scalps) in Shasta County. It was the promise of gold that spurred the English and American Beaver Treaties that caused the almost extinction of that animal in the Snake River valleys. For the Indigenous it meant War, for the pioneers it meant Pioneer Blockhouses. For the leading tribe, the Nisqually, it meant disaster. If it were not for the Pig War, the extinction 
in Washington of natives might have matched that of Oregon and northern California. Judge any written history of this time as to their mentioning (or not) of Fox Island. The use of islands to isolate, starve, and manage Indigenous Peoples was a long-proven way of dealing with sovereign nations. Reservations and treaties are what are studied, remnants of 2 million people going to 20,000 divided among 29 reservations in the State of Washington, 10,000 into 6 reservations in Oregon … and California’s history is even more devastating (after 10,000 years, Indigenous like Americans today, find California’s climate wonderful in the winter and untold, perhaps a million, populace might have lived around the San Joaquín Valley’s shorelines (it was a lake then).
time-immemorial-tribal-sovereignty
In what Territory did the English and American Beaver Treaties of 1819 pertain.
The State Bird of Washington,
the American Goldfinch
Copyright © 2024
Territorial History & Mining
State of Washington History