"Last summer, in the midst of a roiling thunderstorm, my children and I visited the site of Custer’s Last Stand in Montana. The dying ground there signifies one of the most notorious miscalculations in the United States’ long and tragic history of dealings with the American Indians who first populated the North American continent.

Smaller scale demonstrations of racism and greed occurred in this region as well, and a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Kluger casts light on the harsh realities of the rampant land-theft-by-treaty that occurred throughout Western Washington 150 years ago.

“Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek” focuses on the impetus and tactics of Isaac Ingalls Stevens, the first governor of Washington Territory, in persuading the tribes of the Puget Sound region to give over their homelands to the federal government.

Stevens was an ambitious man. In his first year as territorial governor, he worked to oust the Hudson’s Bay Co. from Puget Sound and to uproot local Indian villages wholesale, removing the inhabitants to small reservations that proved to be ill suited to sustaining their way of life.

Stevens’ attitude and actions were marked by impatience and condescension. Kluger characterizes the treaties Stevens presented, beginning with the one brought before the Nisqually people at Medicine Creek, as one-sided land grabs. With the help of sycophantic white settlers who stood to profit from the deal, Stevens extracted treaty signatures through deceit, coercion and possibly even forgery."

Get the Story:
Book review: Shameful chapter in state history (The Tacoma News-Tribune 3/13)

Related Stories:
Book Review: Chief Leschi and 'Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek' (3/7)