Relationship With The White Settlers
The Quileute relationship with the white European and American settlers was similar to many other tribes' experiences. The first contact occurred in 1775 when a Spanish ship missed its landing and the Quileutes took them as slaves. Therefore, right from the start, the Quileutes were looked upon by Europeans as vicious. This happened again in 1787 with a British ship and in 1808 with a Russian ship. The first official negotiations with Americans occurred in 1855 when Isaac I. Stevens and the Quileute signed the Treaty of Olympia. It said that the Quileute people needed to relocate to the Quinault reservation.
"ARTICLE 1. The said tribes and bands hereby cede, relinquish, and convey to the United States all their right, title, and interest in and to the lands and country occupied by them…"
Article 11 of the Treaty of Olympia was a single sentence:
"ARTICLE 11. The said tribes and bands agree to free all slaves now held by them, and not to purchase or acquire others hereafter."
This article took away an integral part of the culture of the Northwest Coastal tribes, the rights to possessions and slaves. Their culture had been focused on possessions and they had always owned slaves, but upon entering the U.S. they were forced to give up a key part of their unique history and culture. Later, in 1882, A.W. Smith came to La Push to teach the native children. He made a school there and started change the names of the people from tribal names to ones from the bible. In 1889, after years of this not being enforced, President Cleveland gave the Quileute tribe the La Push reservation. 252 residents moved there and in 1894, 71 people from the Hoh River got their own reservation. Unfortunately, in 1889 a settler who wanted the land at La Push started a fire that burned down all the houses on the reservation, along with destroying all the artifacts from the days before the Europeans came.
Read more about this topic: Quileute People
Famous quotes containing the words relationship with, relationship, white and/or settlers:
“Henry David Thoreau, who never earned much of a living or sustained a relationship with any woman that wasn’t brotherly—who lived mostly under his parents’ roof ... who advocated one day’s work and six days “off” as the weekly round and was considered a bit of a fool in his hometown ... is probably the American writer who tells us best how to live comfortably with our most constant companion, ourselves.”
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“We black women must forgive black men for not protecting us against slavery, racism, white men, our confusion, their doubts. And black men must forgive black women for our own sometimes dubious choices, divided loyalties, and lack of belief in their possibilities. Only when our sons and our daughters know that forgiveness is real, existent, and that those who love them practice it, can they form bonds as men and women that really can save and change our community.”
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“When old settlers say “One has to understand the country,” what they mean is, “You have to get used to our ideas about the native.” They are saying, in effect, “Learn our ideas, or otherwise get out; we don’t want you.””
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)