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Treaty Council. 1904. Shoshone Agency Wyo.

Shoshone Agency, Wyoming, 1904. Platinum print, 7.875” x 9.875” on larger gray mount. Typed caption affixed to verso of mount, below ca. 1969 ink inscription. CONDITION: Very good, very light wear to photo and mount edges.

An original photograph documenting the principal actors of an underhanded treaty between the U.S. Government and the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes, by which the tribes—instead of being reimbursed for ceded land—were forced to pay for irrigation projects that had yet to deliver them water.

Almost forty men are shown gathered in and around the portico of the brick Shoshone Agency building in Fort Washakie, Wyoming, negotiating the 1904 treaty that would cede over half the remaining Shoshone Reservation to the U.S. government in exchange for what ultimately never materialized: payments generated by the sale of homestead and town lots and profits from irrigation development in large areas to the north of Wind River. Two white men preside over the negotiating table: U.S. Indian Inspector James McLaughlin, the leading government negotiator (in a dark coat), and U.S. Indian Agent H. E. Wadsworth. A typed caption affixed to the verso explains:

This photo gives the pictures of the principal actors of the treaty, by which the Shoshoni and Arapahoe Indians ceeded [sic] to the United States the northern and eastern half of the Wind River Reservation bounded on the south by the Big Wind River and on the east by the Popo Agie and the Little Wind Rivers.

Looking at the photo and taking the persons from the right, they are Rev. Coolidge, a full blooded Indian, with an overcoat on. Sitting on the chair, Yellow Calf, chairman of the Arapahoe Indians, next to him in a light overcoat, U.S. Indian Agent, H. E. Wadsworth, next to him Inspector Major M’Laughlin, a little back of him with his overcoat all buttoned up, Allotting Agent and former Indian Agent Captain H. G. Nickerson, next to him with a cap on, stenographer H. A. Duncan, with the star on his breast Dick Washakie, son of the last chief of the Shoshoni Indians, next to him with a paper in his hand and a cowboy hat on, is George Terry, chairman of the Shoshonis, who made the principal speech in favor of the treaty, recommending some changes.

Treaty was made in April 1904.

Above this caption is an inscription signed by Earnest E. Yadon (1926–2007), who ran an antiques shop out of the old lumber company building of C. H. King (Gerald Ford’s grandfather), built just two years after the treaty was signed. Yadon’s inscription reads: “This is the original I got out of the attic of the Shoshoni Lumber Co. Bldg in Shoshoni, Wyo. in 1969.”

The 1904 Treaty negotiations found the Shoshone and Arapaho tribes in particularly vulnerable positions: battling disease, poverty, and population decline; staring down the expiration of annual food and supplies payments guaranteed by previous treaties; and having recently lost long-time chiefs—not to mention navigating intertribal tensions borne of the Arapaho’s tenuous and supposedly temporary status on the reservation, where they had been deposited by the U.S. Army more than twenty-five years earlier to await a reservation of their own (an unfulfilled treaty promise from 1868). Most eligible Shoshone men ultimately signed the 1904 treaty, while only eighty Arapaho men put their names down. After the treaty was signed on the reservation, Congress modified its terms, adding a financial renegotiation clause and expanding its territorial reach. But the land sale and irrigation scheme upon which the government relied was ultimately a bust: many white settlers to the newly-opened treaty area opted to leave rather than pay in advance for water they had not received, and so the government—instead of reimbursing the tribes for their land—attempted to recuperate its losses by withholding payments and forcing tribal members to do what their white counterparts would not: pay for irrigation that had yet to reach them. To make matters worse, “If the Indians could not pay the fees, officials pressed them to sell the land. White speculators, seeing possible opportunity” in reservation lands that were naturally better irrigated by creeks and streams flowing off the Big Wind River, “advertised for buyers in eastern cities,” and many residents of the reservation were forced to sell their allotments for a fraction of their worth (“The Tribes Sell”). Years later, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation took over the irrigation project from the private contractor originally responsible for it, and doled out the last homestead parcels in the 1940s to WWII veterans—perhaps including Ernest Yadon.

A group portrait of negotiators on the Shoshone Reservation for a 1904 treaty that was effectively a land and irrigation speculation scheme by the U.S. Government, for whose failure the tribes were forced to pay.

REFERENCES: “The Tribes Sell Off More Land: The 1905 Agreement” at WyoHistory.org.

Item #10514

Price: $775.00

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