In return for this recognition, the tribes were entitled to receive half of the fish in the territory in perpetuity, awards of money and provisions, and reserved lands where white settlement would be prohibited.

Meanwhile, the widely publicized discovery of gold in Yakama territory prompted an influx of unruly prospectors who traveled, unchecked, across the newly defined tribal lands, to the growing consternation of Indian leaders.

[7] When Shumaway heard of Bolon's death he immediately sent an ambassador to inform the U.S. Army garrison at Fort Dalles, before calling for the arrest of his own son, Mosheel, who he said should be turned over to the territorial government in order to forestall the American retaliation he felt would likely occur.

Meanwhile, district commander Gabriel Rains had received Shumaway's ambassador and, in response to the news of Bolon's death, ordered Major Granville O. Haller to move out with an expeditionary column from Fort Dalles.

[8] The death of Bolon and the United States defeat at Toppenish Creek caused panic across the Washington Territory, provoking fears that an Indian uprising was in progress.

Rains, who had just 350 federal troops under his immediate command, urgently appealed to Acting Governor Charles Mason (Isaac Stevens was still returning from Washington, D.C. where he had traveled to present the treaties to the Senate for ratification) for military aid, writing that[9] ... all the disposable force in the district will at once take the field, and I have the honor to make a requisition upon you for two companies of volunteers to take the field the earliest possible moment.

The greatest exertions should be made to raise and equip these companies at once.Meanwhile, Oregon Governor George Law Curry mobilized a cavalry regiment of 800 men, a portion of which crossed into Washington Territory in early November.

[8] As Rains was mustering his forces in Pierce County, Leschi, a Nisqually chief who was half Yakama, had sought to forge an alliance among the Puget Sound tribes to bring war to the doorstep of the territorial government.

In response to news of Leschi's growing army, a volunteer troop of 18 dragoons, known as Eaton's Rangers, was dispatched to arrest the Nisqually chief.

[11] On October 27, while surveying an area of the White River, ranger James McAllister and farmer Michael Connell were ambushed and killed by Leschi's men.

Our hunger was so great that the various and penetrating odors permeating the food she had brought us was no bar to our relish for it as I remember.Leschi would later express regret for the raid on the White River settlements and post-war accounts given by Nisqually in his band affirmed that the chief had rebuked his commanders who had organized the attack.

[12] Army Captain Maurice Maloney, in command of a reinforced company of 243 men, had previously been sent east to cross the Naches Pass and enter the Yakama homeland from the rear.

Kamiakan had not expected a force of the size Rains had mustered and the Yakama, anticipating a quick victory of the kind they had recently scored at Toppenish Creek, had brought their families.

During a search of the grounds, Rains' men discovered a barrel of gunpowder, leading them to erroneously believe the priests had been secretly arming the Yakama.

Gilmore Hays, searched the area from which Maloney had previously withdrawn and engaged Nisqually and Klickitat warriors at Biting's Prairie on November 25, 1855, resulting in several casualties but no decisive outcome.

[15] In late November 1855 Gen. John E. Wool arrived from California and assumed control of the United States side in the conflict, making his headquarters at Fort Vancouver.

Wool planned to wage a static war by using the territorial militia to fortify the major settlements while better-trained and equipped U.S. Army regulars moved in to occupy traditional Indian hunting and fishing grounds, starving the Yakama into surrender.

[16] To Wool's chagrin, however, Oregon Governor Curry decided to launch a preemptive and largely unprovoked attack against the eastern tribes of the Walla Walla, Palouse, Umatilla, and Cayuse who had, up to that point, remained cautiously neutral in the conflict (Curry believed it was only a matter of time before the eastern tribes entered the war and sought to gain a strategic advantage by attacking first).

Dissatisfied with Wool's plan to wait until spring before resuming military operations, and having learned of the raid on the White River settlement, Stevens convened the Washington Legislature where he declared "the war shall be prosecuted until the last hostile Indian is exterminated.

As the governor's ship was sailing from the harbor - carrying Stevens back to Olympia - members of some of the Puget Sound's neutral tribes began streaming into Seattle requesting sanctuary from a large Yakama war party that had just crossed Lake Washington.

Doc Maynard began the evacuation of women and children from the neutral Duwamish, by boat, to the west side of Puget Sound while a group of citizen volunteers, led by the marine detachment of the nearby-anchored USS Decatur, started construction on a blockhouse.

[19] To block the passes across the Cascade Mountains and prevent further Yakama movements against western Washington, a small redoubt was established near Snoqualmie Falls by Tokul Creek in February 1856.

Meanwhile, Leschi, having successfully repelled and evaded the previous American attempts to defeat his forces along the White River, now faced a third wave of attack.

As construction on Fort Tilton got underway, Patkanim - brevetted to the rank of captain in the Volunteers - set out at the head of a force of 55 Snoqualmie and Snohomish warriors intent on capturing Leschi.

Patkanim tracked Leschi to his camp along the White River, but a planned night raid was aborted after a barking dog alerted sentries.

Early the next morning Patkanim began his assault, the bloody fight reportedly lasting ten hours, ending only after the Snoqualmie ran out of ammunition.

Edmond Meany would later write that Patkanim returned with "gruesome evidence of his battles in the form of heads taken from the bodies of slain hostile Indians."

By spring of 1856, Stevens began to suspect that some settlers in Pierce County, who had married into area tribes, were secretly conspiring with their Native American in-laws against the territorial government.

[22] Learning of Lander's detention, Francis A. Chenoweth, the chief justice of the territorial supreme court, left Whidbey Island - where he was recuperating from illness - and traveled by canoe to Pierce County.

The Yakama people fled, but nine Cascades Indians who surrendered without a fight, including Chenoweth, Chief of the Hood River Band, were improperly charged and executed for treason.