The famous Indian Chief and prophet was once jailed here at Fort Spokane for years without trial.

This jail cell has harbored many a man; frontiersmen, troublesome soldiers, and defiant Indians. One of the most infamous prisoners was the shama q,olá’ skin, known in English as Skolaskin, who founded a new religion among his native followers.

Skolaskin was born in the Sanpoil settlement snuke’ilt, meaning brush spring, on the Columbia River in 1839. When Skolaskin was twenty he won a blanket while gambling with an elderly, crippled man and soon after, he became bedridden, covered in sores and unable to move his legs. Respected shamans were unable to cure him.

After two years of paralysis, one day Skolaskin lost consciousness. While his family prepared for his burial, Skolaskin woke up singing and explained that he had a message from the powerful one, called qwilan tsu’ten. The Indians must no longer drink, steal, or commit adultery, and they must pray to a new god. Astonished villagers saw Skolaskin as a prophet, who, although not completely recovered, was brought “back to life.” For the rest of his life he could only walk in a stooped position with both hands resting on his knees. Skolaskin became chief of Whitestone, an village near the Nespelem Valley.

Skeptical but curious crowds gathered around Skolaskin. His fame grew as a prophet and his revelations included a great flood that would destroy the world unless his people built a sawmill near the church and used the lumber to build a boat. He believed a male and female of every animal and bird would be put in the boat, then the rain would come and flood the earth.

In 1873, Skolaskin journeyed to Kataro, in Southern Okanogan territory, where he once again predicted disaster. An earthquake, a level 8 on the Rossi-Forel scale, occurred that night, on November 22, 1873.

After the earthquake, Chief Skolaskin exerted even more power over his people. He punished natives for adultery, stealing, and intoxication. His followers were forced to work at the lumber mill, and the disobedient were sent to a hole in the ground covered with planks.

Officials at Fort Spokane were unsure how to handle Skolaskin’s rise to power and his refusal to obey American authority. In 1889 one of Skolaskin’s policemen, Kannumsahwickssa killed a Sinkiuse Indian, Ginnamonteesah.

The American district attorney said he wanted nothing to do with this “inconsequential” affair, since it was a case of one Indian killing another, but officials from Fort Spokane arrested Skolaskin and carried him to the fort by mule. He was released a few days later on the condition that he deliver up the murderer, but after failing to do so, Skolaskin was again taken into custody and sent to McNeil Island federal penitentiary. Though never given a trial, Skolaskin spent three years at McNeil and we then sent to Alcatraz, where he languished as a political prisoner for another nineteen months.

Once Skolaskin returned from prison, he remained a Chief and advised his people to never trust the white men or the government. Toward the end of his life, Skolaskin converted to Roman Catholicism, and by the late 20th century, very few traditionalists still clung to Skolaskin’s religion.

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By the late 1800’s, the frontier was gone and the West was dealing with what they called the "Indian problem." One of their solutions was the Indian Boarding School.

By the late 1800’s, the American government had run out places to put American Indians. The frontier was gone, and native people had been forced onto reservations. But soon enough, land-hungry whites began demanding even the reservations. What would become of the inhabitants? White reformers called this the “Indian problem” and boarding schools were thought to be an answer.

In his annual report to the War Department in 1891, Brigadier General A.V. Kautz, told of the “repeated troubles between Indians and white settlers” in the area. The Indians in “that section,” he said, “are unprovided with an agent and seem to have no one to look for aid or counsel.” Kautz soon reported the following warning to his supervisors: “In the near future a great increase in the number of settlers will succeed the building of the Great Northern Railroad, and trouble will follow unless some provision is made in anticipation.”

With the soldiers now gone from Fort Spokane following the Spanish American war, it became “the purpose of the government to establish the Indian agency and a large Indian school in the abandoned quarters and barracks” according to an 1889 article in the Spokesman-Review. The Fort Spokane Boarding School opened in 1900 and remained open officially until 1914. In a matter of a decade, “drill grounds became playgrounds” and the “Indian problem,” was thought to be well on its way to being subdued. But what was daily life really like for these children?

One native woman recalled a similar school: “Everything happened by bells, ‘triangles’ they were called. A triangle would ring in the morning and we would all run, line up, march in, get our little quota of tooth power, wash our teeth, brush our hair, wash our hands and faces, and then we all lined up and marched outside. Whether it was raining, snowing or blowing, we all went outside and did what was called ‘setting up exercises’ for twenty minutes.".

Uniformity was key to the success of boarding schools. Children were given a strict regimen of work, school and little else. At Fort Spokane, children also sustained the school itself; harvesting a garden, making clothing, repairing sheets and curtains, and working in the kitchen. Just a few years after the school opened, “the appearance of the old fort had begun to change. A community building was being remodeled for an assembly and auditorium, like those in public schools.”

One student at Fort Spokane, Lulu O’Hara, a Spokane Indian who attended the school around 1906 recalled that “everyone stood behind his place until a bell was rung for them to sit down. There was also a bell for grace and a bell for everyone to turn his plate over at the same time. If anyone misbehaved, at a table, they had to sit all by themselves, at a small table at the end of the room for all to see.”

Boarding school life was a sharp contrast to the traditional native childhood that Lulu was used to at home with her family in the Spokane tribe. At home, discipline and punishment were a collective experience for children, usually carried out by the child’s grandparents, not a stranger. If a child misbehaved in the tribe, all children as a group were punished together. Rarely were children ever hit, verbally abused or publicly shamed. Education was found every day working alongside relatives and performing the daily tasks of living and survival.

After the closing of the Fort Spokane Boarding school in 1914, children returned to their homes on the reservation where they attended what were called “day schools.” In 1960, the National Park Service took over the site where the Fort Spokane Boarding School once ran. There are four original buildings including a stable from 1884 and a guard house dating back to 1892 that remain on the site and are preserved as part of the Park Service’s Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area (Wikipedia, Fort Spokane). Additional stories of the Fort Spokane Boarding school can be found at an exhibit in the park.

For more (including 2 images), view the original article.

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