The Indian Dispossessed
define and, if possible, curtail the limits of the reserve."
"To properly define and, if possible, curtail the limits of the reserve." A most diplomatic phrase; the Honorable Commissioner was writing for public perusal. To" properly define," primarily, and to "curtail," incidentally, a new treaty was required. Diplomacy never more delicately screened a real intention behind a fictitious one. No time was wasted in defining the limits of the reserve; the white men knew where they were; the Indians understood them; nobody misunderstood them. A new treaty was drawn up, cutting down the reservation to a plat of land about one-eighth of its original size, in the centre of the old reserve. Then came the usual struggle to gain the Indian assent. The Wallowa Valley was excluded under the new treaty, and Joseph refused to sign it; Looking-glass, White Bird, and many other chiefs whose country was to be taken from them, refused to sign. Even Lawyer, the head chief, whose country in the Kamiah was to be made the centre of the many benefits to come from the new treaty, held out long against the humiliating cut to "twenty acres each" of tillable land for each adult male. But the treaty is full of "Kamiah," although the agency was at Lapwai. "Ten thousand dollars for the erection of a saw and flouring mill, to be located at Kamiah"; a church "on the Kamiah"; a blacksmith shop "at
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