Council convened. Benjamin Shaw read the treaty terms in Chinook Jargon, a nineteenth-century trade language with a vocabulary of three hundred words. The Indians would be paid for their land and moved to reservations. They would maintain their fishing rights, however, in usual and accustomed places, even those located outside reservation boundaries. It is highly unlikely the Indians understood what Stevens proposed. While whites sought prized acreage in the name of the United States, the tribes valued their hunting and fishing rights. They wanted to live freely on their land, as they had for thousands of years.

The meeting broke for the night, and by the next day, December 26, 1854, the deal was done. Sixty-two leaders signed the Treaty of Medicine Creek (or She-Nah-Num), the first in a series of agreements ceding Indian land in present-day Washington to the United States. The Treaty of Medicine Creek was subsequently ratified by Congress on March 3, 1855.

Assessments of Stevens’s character run the gamut, from a dedicated soldier carrying out the wishes of his government to “a man who would stoop to any method to accomplish his objectives, with his ambitions overcoming all scruples.” History would later dub Stevens a “young man in a hurry” for his fast-paced excursions across the territory. At the close of his treaty negotiations with Pacific Northwest tribes, the governor’s real estate deals on behalf of the United States, totaled sixty-four million acres. He had brokered ten treaties in all,  including three made jointly with Joel Palmer, the Oregon superintendent of Indian Affairs. The new Nisqually Reservation encompassed roughly 1,280 acres of rock and timber, unlike the grassland at the river’s edge where the Nisqually people had always lived.

“Whatever these chiefs did during that day, they protected the fishing,” says Georgiana Kautz, a Nisqually Indian. “They protected the hunting, the gathering rights, the shellfish. All of these things they knew in 1855. I think they were amazing, you know. They really were.” Stevens had a script in hand and stuck to it, charges attorney Charles Wilkinson: “The United States not only got the land, they got it without a war.”

“You have Governor Stevens stating and submitting the treaty [to Congress] for ratification,” says historian Hank Adams, “informing the United States that the Indians catch most of our fish, as well as clams and oysters. This represents the part they play and ought to play in the labor and prosperity of the territory.”

The negotiations would prove a source of continuous debate through the ages. How much did the tribes truly understand? Did Nisqually warrior Leschi actually sign the treaty?

Unhappiness spread across Indian Country. Peace between whites and Indians crumbled. Word spread that Leschi was “stirring up trouble with other Indians.” Stevens offered fifty blankets to “any Indian who could lead him to Chief Leschi.” The superintendent got his wish. Leschi’s nephew, Sluggia, duped the leader into surrendering. He misled the chief into thinking whites were ready to talk peace. The nephew paid for his betrayal. In 1857, Wa He Lut, a Leschi warrior, got even. He shot Sluggia and pushed his body off a cliff.

In November 1856, Leschi’s brother, Quiemuth, grew tired of fighting the whites. He asked James Longmire, a pioneer, to take him to Governor Stevens. Quiemuth surrendered and sat in the governor’s living quarters awaiting jail at Fort Steilacoom the next day. Dawn broke in a morning chill and evidence of the battle clung to his shoes. As Quiemuth sat by a crackling fire, Stevens retired to bed.

The sound of a gunshot soon cut through the air.

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  billy Franks, spirit of the father, where the salmon run