Lung-freezing, hand-numbing, eye-burning. When I exited my toasty car at Steptoe Battlefield State Park, it was 11 degrees outside. Unexpected snow had fallen in Spokane, where I stayed the night before, and the temperature had nosedived into the single digits. As I drove south through the rolling farmland of the Palouse, the wind whipped stinging white crystals sideways. The fast freeze had cemented the snow to the road, and I drove cautiously, trying to stay in the mostly clear tire tracks left by others. By the time I turned off the highway toward the park, my hands were rigid around the steering wheel.
Then I got out of the car. My eyes started watering, and the tears immediately froze on my cheeks. It hurt to breathe. Wool gloves did little to keep my fingers warm. The sun was just over the horizon, tinting the scene in white and gold. I was here to see Steptoe Battlefield State Park Heritage Site.
Frozen landscape
Steptoe’s small size belies its importance in Washington history. The battlefield commemorates an 1858 defeat of the United States Army by local Indians from the Palouse, Coeur d’Alene, Spokane, and Yakama tribes. As it’s meant to, the tall stone monument captured my attention first. The Esther Reed chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution placed the monument, surrounded by a low iron fence, in 1914. The low sun made it hard to read the engraved sides of the obelisk. What the monument terms a “desperate conflict” was a flat-out rout of white soldiers by Indians. But revenge for this embarrassing loss put the final nails in the coffin of the Indian Wars in the Pacific Northwest.
The Indian Wars
In the early 1850s, as white settlers flooded into the Pacific Northwest via the Oregon and California trails and by ship, the territorial government under Isaac Stevens attempted to solve land and resource conflicts between whites and native peoples by negotiating treaties. The federal government’s stated goal was assimilation of native peoples into Euro-American culture. Placing Indians onto reservations was the first step in accomplishing this objective, and treaties laid out the terms for doing so. “The Indian Wars” is the phrase used to describe native resistance to white settlement and treaty talks in the Pacific Northwest during this time.
In 1855, territorial governor Isaac Stevens negotiated the Walla Walla Treaty with local tribes. One of its provisions was that whites would not enter without permission Indian lands north of the Snake and east of the Columbia, an area known as “the great rectangle.” Three years later, however, the treaty languished, unratified by Congress.
In the meantime, gold strikes north of Fort Colvile on the Spokane River attracted prospectors, who headed north from California, Oregon, and beyond, through the Columbia Plateau that the treaty forbade them to cross uninvited. Some settlers, streaming in along the Oregon Trail, also ignored the ban. And the military was surveying a road connecting Fort Walla Walla to Fort Benton in Missouri. Led by John Mullan, the survey party planned a route directly through the lands promised to the Indians. These developments led to increased unease among Indians whose homelands encompass the Columbia River plateau.
Colonel Steptoe miscalculates
Col. Edward Steptoe, the commander of Fort Walla Walla, determined in May 1858 that a show of military might would calm the growing unrest. With 159 soldiers, three Nez Perce scouts, and perhaps 30 civilians, Steptoe left Fort Walla Walla for Fort Colvile, where he planned to deal with conflicts between Indians and miners and other issues. The party was ill-supplied, as Steptoe had ordered the soldiers to carry only a few dozen rounds of ammunition and leave heavy sabers behind, although they did lug along two small cannons useful in rough terrain.
The group crossed the Snake River at Alpowa Creek, then headed north across the Columbia River plateau. This route was much farther east than that typically used at the time, and the tribes were angered by Steptoe’s brazen flouting of the treaty agreement and alarmed to see the howitzers the party towed.
Confrontation at Pine Creek
On May 15, 1858, the troops were camped along Pine Creek, near present-day Rosalia, when between 600 and 1,000 Indians surrounded them on the hills above. The natives, from the Palus (Palouse), Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, and Spokane tribes, were angry at this incursion into their territory and warned Steptoe that canoes would not be available for crossing the Spokane River about 30 miles north. The colonel judiciously decided to turn back, and the retreat began on May 17. But it was too late.
A Jesuit missionary who lived among the Coeur d’Alenes tried to broker safe passage but couldn’t, and skirmishes broke out as the troops retreated. At least seven whites and an unknown number of Indians were killed. The remaining whites fled to a small hill at the south end of a ridge, now the site of the monument and memorial, where Indians surrounded them.
Trap and release
As night fell, Steptoe realized that between their numerical disadvantage and their paltry munitions, his party wouldn’t survive the next day. They buried their dead and the howitzers (Steptoe is said to have particularly mourned the loss of the cannons). In the middle of the night, they snuck past the Indian camps and made a break for the Snake River about 40 miles away. The DAR obelisk at the site credits Chief Timothy, a Nez Perce leader and friend to the whites, with negotiating the escape, but modern scholarship has discredited this notion. More likely, the Indians, having made their point, simply allowed the whites to skulk away.
Fallout
The Battle of Pine Creek, Tohotonimme, or Hngossemen (depending on who’s telling the story) was the last major victory for Columbia Plateau tribes. When Steptoe returned ignominiously to Walla Walla, whites leveraged the so-called “Steptoe Disaster” to lobby for a more aggressive military presence in the inland Northwest.
In September 1858, Col. George Wright set out with 700 troops from his station at Fort Dalles on the Columbia River. Bent on revenge for the embarrassment at Pine Creek, Wright engaged Indians at one-sided “battles” at Spokane Plains and Four Lakes, west of present-day Spokane. Wright’s men killed 60 Indians and destroyed lodges and food supplies, ensuring the natives would have a difficult winter. Continuing east, they massacred at least 800 Indian horses that belonged to a Palouse chief. The slaughter took nearly two full days, and the carcasses were left to rot at what became known as Horse Slaughter Camp, near present-day Liberty Lake.
The Palouse and eastern tribes could not wage war effectively without horses, and Wright’s retribution essentially ended Indian resistance on the plateau and cleared the way for white settlement.
Bolstered by the knowledge that the Columbia Plateau Indians had been disempowered, the Army revoked the settlement ban that had been in place on much of the Columbia Plateau, and within a few months Walla Walla became the largest settlement in the inland Northwest. From Steptoe Battlefield today, visitors gaze at the Palouse, the stirringly scenic landscape of rolling hills that, after 1858, became a vaunted paradise of dryland farming. Instead of prairie grasses, fields of lentils, chickpeas, wheat, and barley stretch toward every horizon.
Coyote tracks and rail trails
I comprehended little of this while I was actually at the park. I skimmed the interpretive signs and understood that an important battle had taken place there, but it was just too cold to explore extensively. And it was too early to visit the local interpretive center in Rosalia’s downtown (too bad, because it’s in an old Texaco station and looks interesting). Instead, I walked out onto the hill to get a better sense of where it stood in relation to Pine Creek, following fresh coyote tracks in the crunchy snow.
To the south, a graceful arched bridge crossed the road. Another sign explained that Rosalia Bridge had been a key part of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railroad’s Pacific extension, a project begun in 1906 to link the Midwestern railroad to the Pacific Northwest. The Pacific extension cost four times its estimate and bankrupted the railroad in 1925, the first of several collapses that would eventually end when it was sold in 1985.
What’s wonderful about the Rosalia Bridge, beyond its pleasingly supple form, is that it’s now part of the Palouse-to-Cascades State Park Trail, a 200-mile-long rail-to-trail that follows the old Milwaukee Road grade from the crest of the Cascade Mountains to the Idaho border. One of the longest rails-to-trails adaptations in the country, I think it would be a great bike camping trip.
Thaw
Back in the car, I headed gingerly downhill and turned left so I’d pass under the Rosalia Bridge on my way back to the highway. As I learned more about Steptoe Battlefield and how it fit into the larger context of Washington history, I reflected on the importance of our state parks. This tiny park — established in 1950, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, and named a state park heritage site in 2014 — preserves a story that helps us understand how we got here.
Actually, the park preserves several stories. The DAR obelisk suggests one version of the events at Pine Creek, and it is itself a relic of a Eurocentric perspective on 19th-century white-Indian relations. In contrast, the more recent state park interpretive signage presents a more complete and nuanced picture, one that shows the mechanics of the conflict as well as the larger context of the complex interactions between Indians and whites. The story of the tribes’ struggles to hold onto their culture and homelands in the Pacific Northwest is a difficult one. It’s challenging to confront this history from my privileged position as a white incomer to this region, and it’s hard to imagine what participants in the Steptoe conflict might have been feeling. But it’s important to do so. And state parks help make it possible.
Fast Facts about Steptoe Battlefield State Park
- 4-acre day-use park
- $10 daily parking pass (buy the annual Discover Pass, a bargain at $30)
- interpretive signage, memorial
- picnic area
- park brochure