Chapter VII 



SMOHALLA AND 1 1 IS DOCTRINE 



My young men shall never work. Men who work can not dream, and wisdom 



i ies to us in dreams. . . . You ask me to plow the ground, shall I take a knife 



and tear my mother's bosom f You ask me to dig for stone. Shall I dig under her 

 skin for her bones? You ask me to cut grass and make ha^ and sell it and he rich 

 like white men. I'.nl how dare I cut oft' my mother's hair?— Svwhalla. 



We hear little of Smohalla for several years after the Nez Perce" war 

 until the opening of the Northern Pacific railroad in 1883 once more 

 brought to a focus the land grievances of the Indians in that section. 

 Along Yakima valley the railroad "was located through Indian fields 

 and orchards, with little respect for individual rights," while the host 

 of prospective settlers who at once swarmed into the country showed 

 the usual white man's consideration for the. native proprietors. Some 

 of the Indians, breaking away from their old traditions in order to 

 obtain permanent homes before everything should be taken up by the 

 whites, had gone out and selected homesteads under the law, and 

 the agent was now using the Indian police to compel them to return to 

 the reservation, "and the singular anomaly was presented of the United 

 States Indian agent on the one hand applying for troops to drive the 

 Indians from their homestead settlements to the reservation a hundred 

 miles away, and on the other the Indians telegraphing to the military 

 authorities to send troops to protect them from the Indian police." 

 {MacMurray MS.) In addition to their land troubles the Yakima and 

 their confederated tribes, among whom were many progressive and even 

 prosperous Indians, were restive under constant interference with their 

 religious (Smohalla) ceremonies, to which a large proportion adhered. 



In order to learn the nature of the dissatisfaction of the Indians, and 

 if possible to remove the cause, General Miles, then commanding the 

 military department of the Columbia, sent Major .1. W. MacMurray to 

 the scene of the disturbance in .June, 1884. He spent about a year in. 

 the work, visiting the various villages of the upper ( Jolumbia, especially 

 P nii at Priest rapids, where he met Smohalla, the high priest of the 

 Dreamer theology, and his report on the subject is invaluable. 



Smohalla is the chief of the Wa'napum, a small tribe in Washington, 

 numbering probably less i hau 200 souls, commonly known rather indefi- 

 nitely as "Columbia River Indians," and roaming along both banks of 

 the Columbia from the neighborhood of Priest rapids down to the 

 entrance of Snake river. They are of Shahaptian stock and closely 

 akin to the Yakima and Nez I'erces, and have never made a treaty with 

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