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 the, relationship, white and/or settlers:
“Christianity as an organized religion has not always had a harmonious relationship with the family. Unlike Judaism, it kept almost no rituals that took place in private homes. The esteem that monasticism and priestly celibacy enjoyed implied a denigration of marriage and parenthood.”
—Beatrice Gottlieb, U.S. historian. The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, ch. 12, Oxford University Press (1993)
“Some [adolescent] girls are depressed because they have lost their warm, open relationship with their parents. They have loved and been loved by people whom they now must betray to fit into peer culture. Furthermore, they are discouraged by peers from expressing sadness at the loss of family relationships—even to say they are sad is to admit weakness and dependency.”
—Mary Pipher (20th century)
“It was the pine alone, chiefly the white pine, that had tempted any but the hunter to precede us on this route.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“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)