Spokane

Struggling to Remain Autonomous

The Spokane Tribe is in recovery after two centuries of struggle to remain autonomous. This is evidenced by successes in the courts, economic development projects, and cultural preservation initiatives. Today, the Spokane Tribe has a membership of just over 2,700 members, a third of the precontact population. The Spokane Indian Reservation is approximately 159,000 acres surrounding the town of Wellpinit, Washington, where the Spokane tribal headquarters are located.

For millennia, the areas around the Spokane River and the upper reaches of the Columbia River were especially important to tribal members, who used the salmon, roots (especially camas), berries, and other plants for food, as well as the deer, elk, and moose for meat, clothing, and shelter. With the introduction of the horse in the 18th century, the Spokane went on buffalo hunting and trading expeditions across the Rocky Mountains to the Great Plains Tribes. The relationship the Spokane had with these resources changed once European fur traders arrived and the Spokane began participating in the commercial beaver and gun trades by 1810. Soon after, in the 1830s and 1840s, the arrival of both Protestant and Catholic (especially Jesuit) missionaries further altered the tribe's relationship with their natural and spiritual world. The final major change to the Spokane Tribe in [Page 2001]the 19th century came as the Spokane lost a key encounter with American troops in 1858, which resulted in an increasing number of European American settlers, who, with the support of U.S. government policy (especially the 1862 Homestead Act), dispossessed the Spokane Tribe of their traditional homelands.

In 1881, an executive order by President Rutherford B. Hayes established the Spokane Reservation, onto which many Spokane were directed to move, although other Spokane moved onto the reservations set up for the Coeur d'Alene, Colville, and Flathead Tribes. Beginning in 1906, Spokane tribal members were assigned allotments by the U.S. government, who then opened up even more Spokane land for white settlement. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, tribal members were supposed to remain on the reservation unless they had special permission to leave. Also during this time, off-reservation boarding schools were set up for Spokane children, who were forcibly removed from their homes to be taught all aspects of European American culture and separate themselves from traditional Spokane culture. Although attempts had been made by a variety of European Americans to assimilate the Spokane to white American ways, the Spokane have instead adapted, with varying degrees of success, to living in two worlds.

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