Washington tells of early Columbia Basin history

Grant County history

The Grant County Historical Society has compiled several volumes of Grant County history. The books are available for purchase at the Historical Society Museum gift shop in Ephrata.

These are memories of Grant County, compiled from taped interviews by the Grant County Historical Society.

Today we backtrack and then continue Nat Washington’s story about Grand Coulee. Read on.

Grant County and the early part of Douglas County was the domain of the Sinkayuse Indians and was probably one of the very last areas in the entire country where the Indians were a substantial band of Indians that had never been on a reservation, still roamed in the area.

And of course, they roamed in this area until they signed a treaty with the United States, until around 1880. But then it was a long time before the Indians ever got off the land.

First they were going to send them up on a reservation west of Methow. Well, that never developed because the miners wanted that and only a few ever got out of this area and went up on the Methow. That part of the reservation was taken away from them and they said, “Well now, we’re going to send you to the regular Colville Reservation.”

So by the time the Indians really got off of the land it was probably in the late ’80s and then only to go up to the reservation and still their roots were back here. They came back to Ephrata year after year to dig their roots in this area, so you had the Indians here until a very late period of time. I think it’s interesting that the Indian history of this area lasted later than almost any other place.

For instance, Ellensburg was a thriving town when this was still Indian country here. Sprague, on the Northern Pacific Railroad was quite a town while the Indians still roamed here.

Of course, Spokane was a good sized city. Waterville probably got started while Moses and his people maybe had one foot in the reservation, but still had much of their livelihood still back here in our area.

So that tells a story of why settlement was late here, why surveying was late here. But they did survey in the 1880s, but they didn’t survey east of what is known as the Columbia Guide Meridian, which goes right through Grand Coulee Dam and on up, of course, to the North.

So that tells you the story, at least gives you the background of why my people could come out from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, settle in 1909 and still be on unsurveyed public domain.

Of course, it was right across the river from the Colville Indian Reservation. And, of course, it was sometime before the entire reservation was surveyed. I think settled-on (land) was surveyed and then they went in and surveyed land in the Colville Reservation itself.

More Grant County history from Nat Washington next week.