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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
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FORT SIMCOE
Washington
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Location: Yakima County, at the western terminus
of Wash. 220, about 5 miles southwest of White Swan.
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This short-lived fort (1856-59) was founded in
south-central Washington at the end of the Yakima War (1855-56) to
prevent any further uprisings of the Yakimas, command the central
Washington trails, and prevent settlers from trespassing on Indian
lands. Its major activity, apart from constructing and improving a road
to Fort Dalles, Oreg., was participation in Col. George Wright's 1858
campaign against the eastern Washington tribes. Wright, operating out of
Fort Walla Walla, Wash., conducted operations in the area east of the
Columbia River; and Maj. Robert S. Garnett from Fort Simcoe, in the area
north and west. Garnett and his men, numbering 300, one of whom was a
young lieutenant named George Crook, went into the field for 44 days.
Covering 700 miles, rounding up some Indians, and executing 10 for
killing miners, they took part in no major engagements.
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Commandant's house, Fort Simcoe.
(National Park Service) |
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Col. George Wright led the
forces that triumphed in 1858 over the Indians of eastern Washington.
(National Archives) |
When early the next year the Government opened the
area east of the Cascades to settlement, the Army transferred the Fort
Simcoe garrison to Fort Colville, Wash., turning over the vacated post
to the Indian Bureau for use as the Fort Simcoe (Yakima) Agency. Under
Rev. James H. Wilbur, an Episcopalian priest, it became a model for
Indian administration in the Northwest. In 1922 it was moved to
Toppenish. In 1953 the State leased the 140-acre Fort Simcoe tract from
the Yakima Nation and began restoration.
Fort Simcoe State Park, in an attractive rural
setting on the Yakima Reservation, contains five log and frame
buildings: three one-story officers' quarters (1857-58), one of the four
original blockhouses (1856), and the two-story commandant's house
(1857-58). The latter, once also used by the Indian agency, represents
an excellent example of Gothic Revival architecture in pioneer
Washington and has been refurnished to the era of the 1860's. The park
includes a museum.
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FORT STEILACOOM
Washington
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Location: Pierce County, on Steilacoom Boulevard,
about 3 miles east of Steilacoom.
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This fort was activated in 1849 at the southern end
of Puget Sound, 6 miles from the original site of Fort Nisqually, the
Hudson's Bay Co. farming center. The latter, which the Indians had
attacked earlier in the year, was the nucleus of settlement in the area.
During the Indian uprisings in western Washington in 1855-56 that
culminated in an assault on Seattle, warriors attacked and almost
captured the fort, the major operational base during the uprisings. The
Army abandoned it in 1868, and 6 years later Washington Territory gained
possession of part of the military reservation.
Western State Hospital, a psychiatric institution,
now occupies the site. Four of the officers' quarters have survived,
serving today as doctors' residences.
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FORT WALLA WALLA
Washington
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Location: Walla Walla County, on the Veterans'
Administration Hospital grounds, southwestern part of Walla
Walla.<
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Soldiers from this fort took part in most of the
Indian wars of the Northwest: the 1858 campaign in eastern Washington,
the Modoc War (1872-73), the Nez Perce War (1877), and the Bannock War
(1878). First situated north of Mill Creek and in the spring of 1858
moved southward 1-1/2 miles to its present location, Fort Walla Walla
(1856-1911) was founded during a series of Indian outbreaks about 30
miles east of the Hudson's Bay Co. trading post of the same name. In
1855 most of the tribes of Washington had ceded the majority of their
lands to the U.S. Government, retaining only enough for reservations.
But the subsequent influx of miners and settlers inflamed them, as did
reports of U.S. Government plans to construct a railroad from the
Missouri River to the Columbia. The coastal tribes went on the warpath
in 1855-56, attacking Seattle before being pacified. Some of the tribes
of central Washington expressed their aggressions in the Yakima War
(1855-56).
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Fort Walla Walla in 1857, at its
first location. Drawing by Edward Del Girardin. (National
Archives) |
Two years later the Spokans, Coeur d'Alenes, and the
Palouses of eastern Washington, irritated by a trickle of miners moving
to the Colville mining district in 1855-56, began what is sometimes
called the Spokane, or Coeur d'Alene, War (1858) by defeating Maj.
Edward J. Steptoe's force from Fort Walla Walla near present Rosalia,
Wash. Fort Walla Walla subsequently became Col. George Wright's base,
supported by Fort Simcoe. In September he won major victories in the
Battles of Four Lakes and Spokane Plain, Wash. That same fall the
opening of the Walla Walla Valley to settlement created new friction
with the Indians, and the garrison kept busy maintaining the peace.
Beginning the next year and until 1862, it also helped protect crews
constructing the Mullan Road.
Numerous historic buildings remain amid modern
structures. They are in excellent condition, though the Veterans'
Administration has modified many of them. Rows of officers' quarters and
barracks run along opposite sides of the parade ground. To the rear of
the barracks are the stables. The post cemetery, where military burials
from the Nez Perce War are consolidated, is within a city park,
immediately south of the hospital. The Daughters of the American
Revolution has placed a marker at the first site of the fort, on Main
Street between First Avenue and Spokane Street.
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Second Cavalry troops on parade
in 1887 at Fort Walla Walla. (National
Archives) |
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FOUR LAKES BATTLEFIELD
Washington
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Location: Spokane County, town of Four
Lakes.
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The clash at this site on September 1, 1858, marked
the beginning of a running engagement that culminated 4 days later in
the Battle of Spokane Plain. In these battles, Col. George Wright
revenged the victory of the Spokans, Palouses, and Coeur d'Alenes of
eastern Washington over Major Steptoe in May about 25 miles to the
southeast of the Four Lakes Battlefield. Wright's 600 cavalry men and
infantry men, equipped with the new 1855 long-range rifle-muskets,
whipped an equal-sized Indian force, emboldened by its triumph over
Steptoe. The troops, who did not have a single casualty, killed 60
Indians and wounded many others.
An arrow-shaped stone pyramid in the town of Four
Lakes marks the site of the battle.
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SPOKANE PLAIN BATTLEFIELD
Washington
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Location: Spokane County, marker on U.S. 2, about
10 miles west of Spokane.
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In the wake of the Battle of Four Lakes, the Battle
of Spokane Plain was the last in Colonel Wright's 1858 campaign in
eastern Washington. Ranging over 25 miles and testing the endurance of
the participants, it resulted in another Army victory. After the battle,
shrugging off peace overtures, Wright marched through Indian country
singling out the fomentors of the war and destroying the horseherds. The
Yakima chieftain Kamiakin again made good his escape. But, before
returning to Fort Walla Walla, Wright hanged 15 war leaders and placed
others in chains. Like the Rogue River Indians of Oregon, the tribes he
campaigned against in 1858 never again tried to stem the flow of
settlers by force of arms.
A large stone pyramid in a 1-acre State park
commemorates the battle.
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Gustav Sohon's drawing of the
Battle of Spokane Plain. (Smithsonian
Institution) |
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STEPTOE BATTLEFIELD
Washington
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Location: Whitman County, on U.S. 195, about 1 mile southeast
of
Rosalia.
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The 1858 campaign against the Indians of eastern
Washington that culminated in Army victories in September in the Battles
of Four Lakes and Spokane Plain began at this site. On May 18 about
1,000 Spokans, Coeur d'Alenes, and Palouses attacked Maj. Edward J.
Steptoe and his force of 164 men, who were investigating reported Indian
depredations and seeking to awe the Indians on a march from Fort Walla
Walla, Wash., to the Colville mining district. Severe fighting lasted
all day. During the night, Steptoe broke contact and made a forced
85-mile march from the knoll on which he had taken refuge to the Snake
River, where some friendly Nez Perces helped the troops cross and find
safety on the other side.
The knoll is commemorated by a 4-acre State memorial
park. It features a 25-foot granite shaft erected by the Daughters of
the American Revolution, which deeded the site to the State. Listed on
the shaft are the names of the soldiers who lost their lives and the Nez
Perces who aided the retreating troops. The running battle took place in
Pine Creek Valley for a distance of 4 miles up stream to the north from
the knoll. Except for agricultural use, the landscape is little altered.
On the basis of a mistaken identification with Steptoe Butte, a natural
landmark about 30 miles to the south, Steptoe Battlefield is sometimes
incorrectly called Steptoe Butte Battlefield.
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The 1858 Steptoe disaster,
pictured here by Gustav Sohon, spurred Army retaliation. (Library of
Congress) |
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TSHIMAKAIN MISSION
Washington
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Location: Stevens County, on Wash. 231, about 7
miles northeast of Ford.
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In 1838 the interdenominational American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent a small group of reinforcements
to join Dr. Marcus Whitman and Rev. Henry H. Spalding in the Oregon
country. Part of the group were two Congregational ministers and their
wives: Elkanah and Mary Walker and Cushing and Myra Eells. After
spending the winter at Whitman Mission, Walker and Eells moved north in
the spring of 1839, and at a site in a pleasant valley north of the
Spokane River that the Spokan Indians called Tshimakain ("Place
of the Springs") established a mission. About 25 miles northwest of the
site of the city of Spokane, it was the farthest north of the American
Board establishments. Its nearest non-Indian neighbors were at the
Hudson's Bay Co. post of Fort Colville, 50 miles farther north. The
missionaries had only limited success with the Spokans. When the Cayuses
attacked Whitman Mission in the fall of 1847, the Walkers and Eellses
fled to Fort Colville and in the spring of 1848 to the Willamette
Valley. Tshimakain Mission never reopened.
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Tshimakain Mission in 1853.
Tinted lithograph by John Mix Stanley. (Bancroft Library, University
of California) |
No remains have survived, and a modern farmhouse
occupies the site. The spring that provided the missionaries with water
still flows through the farmyard. A State marker stands on the east side
of Wash. 231 directly in front of the site. The valley itself is
virtually unchanged except for occasional fences.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/sitec18.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
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