The Columbia Reservation
On April 18, 1879, the United States set aside the Columbia Reservation for Chief Moses and his tribe. The tribe agreed to cede their Columbia Basin territory, which was then opened for homesteading. The new reservation was bordered on the east by the Okanogan River (the western boundary of the Colville Indian Reservation), on the south by the Columbia River, on the west by the Chelan River, Lake Chelan and the crest of the Cascade Mountains, and on the north by the international boundary with Canada. This was some distance away from the tribe's original range (which was south of the Columbia), and the terrain was very different.
Approximately the same boundaries formed the Okanogan and Similkameen Mining District, originally organized in 1860. Lead and silver ore had been found in Toad's Coulee near the Canadian border. The white settlers, miners and ranchers mostly, held a meeting on July 9, 1879 near Lake Osoyoos and drew up resolutions opposing the creation of the reservation and asking the government to appraise the value of their properties for compensation if the reservation did go ahead.
Interior Secretary Carl Schurz turned the matter over to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, with instructions that the white settlers would suffer no harm. Moses, however, had little respect for the Bureau and more for the army, so the army was given the job of administering the reservation. The army set up a camp at the southern end of Lake Chelan to do this.
Chief Moses complained about the white settlers on the reservation, since he had been promised whites would be kept out. Colonel Henry C. Merriman, the army commander, sent Captain H.C. Cook north on August 19, 1880 to list and assess the improvements made by the white settlers and to ask them to leave. He did this for seven settlers, estimating the value of their property at $3,577, much less than the owners' estimate of $11,000.
In late 1880 or in 1881 the military determined that there were 17 bona fide white residents of the region prior to April 18, 1879. However fewer than 100 members of Moses's tribe had moved to the reservation. Chief Moses himself did not live there, having relocated to the Colville Reservation just to the east of the Columbia Reservation when his tribe was expelled from the Columbia Basin. The settlers began a lobbying campaign to abolish the reservation and move the Sinkiuse-Columbia to the Colville Indian Reservation. Failing that, they asked for the return to white settlement of that portion of the reservation within 10 miles (16 km) of Canada. (Nearly all the mining claims were within that region.)
Violence broke out in 1882, with angry white settlers destroying Indian property. General Miles also feared an Indian uprising. Order was soon restored, however. On February 23, 1883, President Chester A. Arthur signed an executive order restoring a 15-mile (24 km) wide strip along the Canadian border to the public domain. Chief Moses and other delegates were taken to Washington, D.C. for a conference to resolve the outstanding issues.
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—The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, the first sentence of the article on “life” (based on wording in the First Edition, 1935)
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