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CLARK COUNTY INDIANS WERE NOT COWLITZ - Page 3
What is Aboriginal Land?
What is meant by the term: “aboriginal” land? Is the term “indigenous” properly applied to native peoples who came into an area after a foreign occupation, after introduction of devastating new diseases, weapons and customs on a grand scale? Does the collapse of the Chinookan strongholds, due to European diseases, mean that a different tribe can become “indigenous” by setting up camp within a half-day's walk from Fort Vancouver? Does it matter that white settlers were already staking out farms, building houses, running ferries, and opening stores and post offices within a mile or two of the encampment?
The legal standard for determining aboriginal ownership is one of exclusive use for a long time, held in one case to mean more than 40 years:
“The status of aboriginal ownership is not accorded to tribes at the very instant they first dominate a particular territory but only after exclusive use and occupancy `for a long time.'" Sac & Fox Tribe v. United States, 161 Ct. Cl. 189, 205 (U.S. Ct. Cl. , 1963).
Here there were between zero and fourteen years from the time of Cathlapotle Chinook habitation (1833 or 1848) and white settlement (1844 or 1849) as further detailed below.
An aboriginal claim must be evaluated in the context of other residents and claimants to the land involved, in this case, including white settlers. Consider what was happening just over the river in Oregon.
“In 1855 the local census showed that there were in the town four churches, one academy, one public school, one steam flour mill, four steam saw mills, four printing offices, and about forty stores engaged in the sale of dry goods, groceries, etc.” Portland-on-Wallamet, The Overland Monthly, Vol. 1, (1868)
White settlement in the Lewis River area was well under way by 1856. The Donation Land Claims Act went into effect in 1850 and lasted for 5 years. This act reinforced U. S sovereignty over the area and provided for existing and new settlers to obtain legal titles from the United States. To do so they had to “reside upon and cultivate” the land for four years. Fertile land along the Lewis River was highly desired and quickly settled by whites. By 1855, 27 donation land claims had taken up all of the bottomland on both sides of Lewis River from the mouth to seven miles above Woodland. [1] In 1851 a steamer brought goods up to a location one-mile below Woodland, and there a riverside store called “The Oaks” was established. In 1853 the Pekin Post Office was opened nearby.
Settlement of the area had preceded the 1850 Donation Land Claims Act by about 6 years. Adolphus Lee Lewis started running cattle along the Lewis River in 1844. Columbia Lancaster settled in 1849. [2]
Steamers regularly plied the Columbia and when settlers wanted to go to Portland or Vancouver they went to the Caples' farm across from Columbia City and flagged one down. The steamer would nose into the bank at that location and pick them up. Caples Landing is still on the maps of the area.
These 27 families and others in the area were very afraid of Indians due to the 1855-6 Yakima war. There was a local friendly Indian named Zack.
“On March 26, 1856 the settlers were warned by Indian Zack that the Yakima Indians were coming down from Chichali Prarie to murder or drive the whites out of their lands. The alarm was spread and all night long the settlers gathered their immediate belongings in their boats & headed for the clock house at St. Helens Oregon.
“The story as told by Henry (Kenzie B.) Caples to Grant Burk was that, after warning settlers on his way to Mr. Caples, on the bank of the Columbia, he got in the boat with the Caples family & rowed over to Columbia City directly across on the Oregon side. [The Caples farm was approximately three miles north of the mouth of the Lewis River in Cowlitz County.] The next morning Zack and Mr. Caples went to a high point & looked across the river to the Caples. Were (sic) they saw a band of hostile indians making frantic gestures for an hour or so, then retreating back up the Lewis River back home to Yakima.
“The settlers stayed in and around the St. Helens block house three months- the men folks crossing the river to their farms in the daytime to plant their crops always having a gun handy.” [3]
A company of volunteers and regulars called the Lewis River Rangers was soon formed to defend the area. It was headed up by William Bratton, himself a Donation Land Claim holder along the lower Lewis River.
This history of Lewis River settlement can be compared with the “Cowlitz Indian Tribe Literature Search” submitted to the BIA in June 2003. In that document Dr. Beckham writes that settlement of the area began in the 1860s. He dates the first land title in the township at 1864 and cites an 1885 history of Clark County for a story about the first settler in 1873. [4] However, the same source reports dozens of settlements earlier by two and three decades. [5]
Aboriginal title is lost and cannot be regained after the United States takes the land for its citizens and allows them to enter and exclude the aboriginals:
“Aboriginal title refers to the right of the original inhabitants of the United States to use and occupy their aboriginal territory. [cite] It exists at the pleasure of the United States, and may be extinguished `by treaty, by the sword, by purchase, by the exercise of complete dominion adverse to the right of occupancy, or otherwise. . . .' United States v. Santa Fe Pacific R.R. Co., 314 U.S. 339, 347, 86 L. Ed. 260, 62 S. Ct. 248 (1941).”
Confederated Tribes of Chehalis Indian Reservation v. Washington, 96 F.3d 334, 341 (U.S. App., 1996)After the 1850 Donation Land Claim Act, the policy and practice was to give title to white settlers and to exclude Indians.
Footnotes
[1] Fields of Flower and Forests of Firs-A History of The Woodland Community 1850-1958
[2] Clarke County Washington Territory 1885, B.F. Alley, Post Publishing Company
[3] Fields of Flower and Forests of Firs-A History of The Woodland Community 1850-1958
[4] Cowlitz Indian Tribe Literature Search: Examination of Cultural Resources. Beckham (2002) By 1873 a son of Chief Umtux was a legal landowner and farmer in the area. See below.
[5] Clarke County Washington Territory 1885, B.F. Alley, Post Publishing Company
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