Plagued by poor health, John McAdams Webster served in the U.S Army at a time when military conflict was unlikely. But no matter where his career took him, he served with distinction. As a school superintendent and Indian Agent at Ft. Spokane, he earned a rare reputation for service to the local tribes.

It was a long way from West Point to the remote frontier post of Ft. Spokane. John McAdams Webster, from Warrenton, Ohio, began his military career by joining the 197th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in 1865. Though he was only 16 years old, Webster was commissioned as a second lieutenant. In September of 1865 he went to West Point and due to health issues, he remained there for six years. His commission as a second lieutenant was to the 22nd Infantry, which was on frontier duty at the time. Promotions were hard to come by, and Webster would wait until 1879 to become first lieutenant and until 1891 to become captain. All the while, he served with quiet distinction in staff positions at several posts.

An accident in 1895 resulted in a spinal injury that restricted the use of his right leg, causing him to depend on a cane. Unable to participate fully in Army activities, Webster retired in December of 1898 and took up residence in his home state of Ohio. But in 1904, at the request of the commander of the Army, Webster was appointed to the Department of the Interior. This Superintendent appointment put him in charge of the Indian boarding school at Ft. Spokane.

In contrast to his predecessor, Webster is remembered for leading with awareness and sensitivity to the natives’ problems. According to some, Webster always took a “paternalistic posture” towards natives and attempted to “educate” them in the white man’s ways. Webster took over the Colville Indian Agency (August 1, 1904) after an embezzlement scandal ended Agent Anderson’s tenure. Webster aimed to reform the boarding school system, advocating for a day school where families would not have to send their children from far away.

As attendance at the school dwindled, Webster suggested that Ft. Spokane should become a clinic for tuberculosis. He reasoned that the tribes would be better served by a hospital when one out of every four Indians in the area suffered from tuberculosis.

As superintendent, Webster had authority over the Spokane, Colville, and Nez Perce reservations. His responsibilities included their general welfare and their legal relationship with the U.S. government. Webster could appoint tribal judges to oversee the Court of Indian Offenses. One of these judges was William Three Mountains (the younger,) who earned Webster’s admiration as a great leader who wanted the best for the Spokane people.

Webster's advocacy for Native Americans may have cost him his position. The Bureau of Indian Affairs forced his resignation February of 1912, saying that he had put his wards above his normal duties. He would later return to Eastern Washington as an Indian agent for the Spokane Reservation before resigning again. Webster finally returned to his home on Mackinac Island, Michigan, where he lived until his death in 1921.

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Native American scouts were widely used by the US Army beginning with the Revolutionary War. Indian scouts helped the military navigate through unfamiliar terrain and cultures. These native men, however, served for reasons of their own, and often resisted both military discipline and attempts to change their culture.

Like most Army posts on the western frontier, Fort Spokane relied on native scouts. Indian scouts interpreted, guided soldiers through the wilderness of eastern Washington, and brought back vital intelligence to the Army.

At Fort Spokane, being an Indian scout was at first not a permanent military role, but more of an auxiliary unit. From 1884 to 1886, native scouts agreed to serve for six months. Five to ten scouts were on hand at any given time. The men would bring their families to live with them in tents just outside the fort. The scouts wore their traditional attire, as they were not formally enlisted men in the Army.

In 1891, an army inspector reported that there were ten Indian scouts at Fort Spokane, by then wearing regulation uniform. "They were remarkably neat," he observed, "and the saddle requirements and horses were in very good order." Their tents were pitched in "regular order" and "the grounds around are very well policed." He concluded: "I was impressed with the soldierly appearance of these Indians."

Later that year, General John Gibbon decided to professionalize the Indian scouts, who would now be treated as regular soldiers. Natives that did enlist into the Army at Fort Spokane were appointed to Company I (which stood for "Indian"). They received supplies, a salary, schooling from officers’ wives, and uniforms. It was believed that enlisting American Indians as regular soldiers would both ease the chronic manpower shortage of the Army and help "civilize" the native soldiers.

The effort was not a success. By 1893 a mere twelve Spokanes and five Colvilles were enlisted. The natives were disappointed with the lack of military action and the constant drilling and formal parades. They complained that their uniforms were “too tight” and “prevented circulation of air about their persons.” An article in the Spokesman-Review claimed that "one company commander gave the the men permission to remedy this defect as they saw best. The next morning they showed up on parade with the seat of their trousers cut out."

The monotony and rigid discipline of military service in the American West was felt by white officers and enlisted men as well. But unlike the white soldiers, the native soldiers were in their own homeland, and found it easy to desert the post and return to their villages. The officer corps at Fort Spokane disliked the use of natives for this very reason, and also for their continued insistence of bringing their wives and families to live with them at the fort.

On August 2, 1893 by special order, Company I was disbanded due to desertions and poor recruiting efforts. Major General George Crook summed up the failure from the white point of view: “An Indian fighting as an Indian is an effective soldier; as a member of a civilized army he is useless.” The Spokesman was more diplomatic, declaring that "the Indians were as brave as any troops ever enlisted," but "could not be made soldiers of the modern type."

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What do you do with a drunken soldier? Park historians are unsure what this metal-lidded hole in the ground was used for, but some say “the box” was a punishment for soldiers who broke the rules.

Fort Spokane, like any other military fort at the time, was a structured place where officers and enlisted men practiced drills and kept the peace. During their time off, the soldiers were free to get in trouble, and with a brewery just up the hill, drunkenness was the most common offense. Discipline was an important aspect of life at the fort. Punishments were often both physically painful and humiliating for the soldiers.

Once a soldier was accused he could expect to face a court martial, which was the most common punishment given at Fort Spokane. If further punishment was needed the soldier would then be sentenced to his fate. One punishment was called bucking and gagging: a soldier would be forced to sit with his hands tied under his legs and his feet bound, and a stick would be placed in his mouth. Other methods of punishment included forcing soldiers to stand on barrels, sit on a wooden mule or horse, or even be branded with a hot iron. Another severe punishment that may have occurred at Fort Spokane was known as “the box.”

The box was a device that was commonly used in areas of high humidity or extreme heat. Soldiers were confined in a tight, poorly ventilated space. Pits in the ground that are extremely similar to this one have been identified as punishment boxes at other Army forts from this era.

Effects that the box would have on its victims include; heat exhaustion, dehydration, difficulty breathing which could lead to suffocation, and if left in the box long enough, even death. The box was also known as the “punishment box” or the “dog house.” The general idea of the “box” was to deprive its victims of the ability to move and isolate them in darkness in order to force them to conform to regulations.

Is this hole in the ground in front of a you a 100-year-old punishment pit? The size and shape of the pit suggest that it is. On the other hand, the location of the pit close to the officer's quarters would argue against it, and the relatively few surviving documents from the fort do not mention it. The vault may instead be the remains of a drainage or sewer system. Which do you think it was?

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From Boarding School to a University Scholarship

Bertha Finley Brisbois was born in 1890, on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Her father, John Finley, was a Flathead from Montana and her mother, Annie Lafleur, was Spokane. Bertha was one of the children taken to the Fort Spokane Indian Boarding School, where she would have learned the usual curriculum of the English language, Christianity, and domestic skills such as cooking and sewing.

In 1914 Bertha married Nazaire Richard "Dick" Brisbois, and together they started a family. Perhaps it was her time at the boarding school that encouraged Bertha to develop schooling opportunities closer to home for her own children and those of the reservation. She was responsible for the founding of the first two public schools on the Spokane reservation in the 1930s. A key reason being that before the schools were open on the reservation children had to travel to Oregon to receive an education. Bertha wanted to keep them close to home.

Bertha died in 1944, but the Brisbois children went on the accomplish great things. Joseph Oliver Brisbois joined the Army and flew 85 missions as a turret gunner on a B-25 bomber during World War II. This was an impressive feat since 25 missions granted you a ticket home and 50 missions was considered a miracle.

In 1987, Bertha’s children and grandchildren set up a memorial Scholarship at Eastern Washington University, which is meant for students from the Spokane tribe that would attend EWU’s college of Science and Technology.

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