Yakima Wars

Yakima Wars In September 1855, angry over recent treaty concessions to whites, Yakima Indians killed six miners, murdered their US agent, and forbade whites to enter their lands. On 6–9 October, 500 Yakimas defeated 100 soldiers from Fort Dalles, Wash., killed 5 and wounded 17, and captured their howitzer. Indians on Puget Sound then began hostilities; they attacked Seattle on 26 January 1856 with Yakima help. By 11 July, fighting had ended east of the Cascades. On 17 July, Oreg. volunteers defeated 300 Indians in the Grand Ronde Valley. The presence of 500 US regulars in Yakima territory caused fighting to peter out by autumn 1856, but without a formal Yakima capitulation. Fighting resumed on 17 May 1858, when 1,000 Yakimas and other Indians defeated 164 US soldiers. Colonel William Wright’s 600 US troops defeated Kamiakin’s 4,000 warriors on 1 September at the battle of Four Lakes (killing 60 Indians without a single loss) and ended the war on 5 September by defeating 700 warriors at the battle of Spokane Plain. By hanging 16 hostiles as examples and forcing all Indians on to reservations, Wright ended large-scale resistance to white settlement in the Columbia basin.