Nisqually State Park History

“The river was the lifeblood of the people. Not only did it connect all of the many villages into one tribe, but it was the home of the salmon, the Nisquallies’ main source of food.”    --Cecelia Svinth Carpenter, Where the Waters Begin

Nisqually State Park opens windows into an ice age-sculpted landscape that is central to the identity of the Squally-Absch, “People of the River, people of the Grass.” The park encompasses ancestral villages, fishing sites, sacred sites and prairie grassland that are all historically significant to the Squally-Absch, now often referred to as the Nisqually Indian Tribe.

Glacial Flood

The last major advance of the ice age glaciation into the Puget Sound region reached its maximum extent about 16,950 years ago. Ice filled the Puget Sound trough thousands of feet deep, before melting rapidly as temperatures rose. Impounded by the ice, meltwaters from the Cascade Mountains to the east combined with drainage from the mass of ice to form a very large lake in the valley of the Carbon River, less than 20 miles from today’s Nisqually State Park. About 100 years into the melt, the ice could no longer hold back “Lake Carbon,” and its waters were released in at least two stages of catastrophic outburst floods, a slurry of water and pulverized landslide debris which raced towards the sea by the shortest available route, scouring and deepening the valley of Ohop Creek, on the western edge of today’s park, by over 300 feet. Debris from the flow was deposited as far away as the Mima Mounds near Olympia.

Indigenous Lands

Nisqually State Park lies within the traditional territories of Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Nisqually Indian Tribe, Squaxin Island Tribe, Puyallup Tribe, Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, and Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. For thousands of years, the Nisqually River and its tributaries have provided habitat for a diverse community of life that forms the basis of their cultures.

Of special significance to Indigenous people is the expanse of Mashel Prairie, partially in and surrounded by today’s Nisqually State Park. It is the easternmost prairie in the Nisqually River watershed, situated close to the confluence of the Mashel and Nisqually Rivers and a dependable spring. The prairie developed because the poorly drained soil there favored grasses, bulbs and shrubs over tree species. The prairie vegetation reached its peak in a warmer period around 8,000 years ago but persisted with stewardship by the Squally-Absch people who lived there. Gathering bracken and camas, prairie residents tilled and aerated the soil with digging sticks. Periodic burning suppressed trees and brush and maintained the open prairie.

The open lands of their homeland combined with strong familial ties to Sahaptin-speaking Indigenous people on the east slopes of the Cascade Mountains enabled the Squally-Absch to incorporate horses into their lifeway. Among the many who made their homes at the prairie was Leschi, who would become an important leader in his later life.

Treaties and Conflict

The Oregon Treaty between the United State and Great Britain in 1846 established the border between the two countries’ colonial administration at the 49th parallel, putting the site of today’s Nisqually State Park under American jurisdiction.

Local tribes ceded ownership of the area to the US federal government under duress in the Treaty of Medicine Creek in 1854. Poor communication at the treaty council and provocations by territorial officials and local settlers afterwards led to armed conflict between allied tribes led by Chief Leschi (Nisqually) and others against US government forces and volunteer militias. On October 27, 1855, Indigenous warriors being pursued by a territorial volunteer militia killed nine white settlers in the White River Valley, about 25 miles north of today’s Nisqually State Park. In retaliation, Indian Agent Michael Simmons ordered all noncombatant tribal members to an internment camp on Fox Island in Puget Sound in November 1855.

The last major battle of the Puget Sound Indian War, as the period became known, happened on or about (sources vary) March 10, 1856, at Connells Prairie near today’s Lake Tapps Reservoir. Regular US Army soldiers confronted Indigenous warriors led by Chief Leschi and others, who largely fled over Naches Pass to eastern Washington after the engagement.

The Indigenous internees continued to face difficult conditions on Fox Island with poor shelter, inadequate food and lack of medical care. Of approximately 700 people at the site, 80 internees died just between May and September 1856, mostly from respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis.

Even though active resistance had ended, the internment order continued to be used as a justification for violence against any Indigenous people away from the internment camp, despite the fact that most were simply trying to avoid the unhealthy conditions there and continue their traditional food harvesting rounds.

Mashel Massacre

After the battle at Connells Prairie, Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens ordered territorial militia units to continue to pursue any Indigenous people found away from the Fox Island internment camp. On March 29th, 1856, a 40-man unit of the volunteer Washington Mounted Rifles led by Captain Hamilton J. G. Maxon plus 18 additional volunteers under the command of Captain S.C. Achilles was ordered to scout the area around Mashel Prairie to capture any Indigenous people found there.

The tragic details of the encounter, which came to be known as the Mashel Massacre, has been passed down through Nisqually families. Billy Frank Jr. recalled that his grandfather had told him:

  "Those Indians at the massacre, they were ... up on the hill looking down at the place where the Mashel runs into the Nisqually.  They said the soldiers came on them and the Indians all ran down the hill and swam across the [Nisqually] and ran up the other side.  And the soldiers were shooting them from the top of the hill.  There was a woman carrying a baby on her back and they shot her.  She and the baby fell into the river and floated down ... . Some of the young got away — climbed up the hill on the other side of the river.  I don’t know how many they killed, but there were a lot of them"

An account of the event was also recorded by Private A.J. Kane, who was attached to the volunteer force, and it was published in an Olympia newspaper about a month later. In the account, he detailed how the volunteer soldiers were ordered to surround a group of Squally-Absch people camped at a fishing site by the confluence of the Mashel and Nisqually Rivers.  When the troops closed in on the camp, many people, taken by surprise, attempted to cross the river to hide in the woods. They were intercepted by other soldiers positioned on the opposite shore. The account confirms the killing of eight people but vaguely references additional people who may have escaped or been captured and is unclear whether more of the Indigenous people at the camp were also killed.

Other contemporary accounts claim that many more Indigenous people were killed by the soldiers under the command of Maxon and Achilles, including an encounter with survivors and relatives of those killed detailed by US Army Lieutenant August V. Kautz, who passed the Mashel-Nisqually confluence on his trek toward the summit of Mount Rainier in 1857. Kautz related that he was told that Maxon’s command had “killed the most of them without regard to age or sex.”

Chief Leschi

The Medicine Creek Treaty was renegotiated at the Fox Island Council on August 5, 1856. Attended by Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens, Indian Agent Michael Simmons, and US military leaders, the Council did not include Chief Leschi, who had surrendered to US Army Colonel George Wright in Naches east of the Cascade Mountains. The parties reached an agreement to relocate and enlarge the Nisqually and Puyallup Reservations and add the Muckleshoot Reservation. The treaty revisions were approved by President Franklin Pierce on January 20, 1857. 

Chief Leschi was accused of the murder of Abram B. Moses, an officer of the territorial militia, in 1856. His trial resulted in a hung jury, as the jury had been instructed that killing of combatants during wartime did not constitute murder. At a second trial in 1857, the jury was not given that instruction and returned a conviction and death sentence. Dr. William Tolmie, a local representative of the British Hudson’s Bay Company, petitioned newly appointed Territorial Governor LaFayette McMullen (later a Confederate representative from Virginia) to pardon Leschi, but he refused. The US Army refused to carry out the execution, prompting the Territorial Legislature to enact a law that enabled local authorities to execute Leschi. Chief Leschi was hanged on February 19, 1858. The hangman, Charles Grainger, later said “I felt then I was hanging an innocent man, and I believe it yet.”

In 2004, the Washington state legislature passed a resolution detailing the injustices committed in the trial and execution of Leschi and recognizing him as a “courageous leader whose sacrifice for his people is worthy of honor and respect.” The resolution urged the Washington Supreme Court to vacate the original conviction.

On December 10, 2004, Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerry Alexander convened an Historical Court of Inquiry and Justice in Tacoma to reexamine the case. After hearing 4-1/2 hours of testimony from 11 witnesses (historians, tribal elders, and experts in military and Indian law), the court, composed of two Supreme Court justices, two appellate judges, two county judges, and one tribal judge unanimously declared Leschi exonerated.

Whatever the future holds, do not forget who you are. Teach your children, and then teach their children also. Teach them the pride of a great people…A time will come again when they will celebrate together with joy. When that time comes, my spirit will be there with you.      –Chief Leschi

Soo-Too-Lick (Indian Henry)

In the 1860s, Mashel Prairie remained the home of many Nisqually-Absch. Soo-Too-Lick, who had roots among the Klickitat and Yakama Nations of eastern Washington, rose to a leadership position in the community at Mashel. Married to three women with roots in the upper Nisqually and Cowlitz Valleys, his family developed a comfortable farm at the prairie, raising horses and cows and establishing fields of grain and vegetables.

His American nickname, Indian Henry, was purportedly given by mail carrier Henry Winsor, who, when introduced, found the name Soo-Too-Lick too difficult to pronounce and offered his own name as a replacement.

The farm became a community center for the area, and Soo-Too-Lick gained a reputation as not only a successful farmer and rancher, but as an excellent woodsman and guide. He offered his service as a guide to adventurers attempting to climb to the summit of Mount Rainier, reputedly for the rate of two dollars per day.

Among the customers he guided to the mountain was John Muir, who summited the peak in 1888. Muir described Indian Henry as a “mild-looking, smallish man with three wives, three fields, and horses, oats, wheat and vegetables.”

Soo-Too-Lick apparently had a favored spot in the subalpine meadowlands below Mount Rainier. After trekking to the mountain with his neighbor Torger Peterson, Peterson wrote:

“We went on horseback through brush and lower logs and finally landed in what is now known as Indian Henry’s Hunting Grounds. It was a clear day and the sun was just setting when we reached the mountains and I will never as long as I live forget that sight; such a park surrounded with flowers of all colors and descriptions…”

Land Disposal

Government surveys were completed in 1894 and the land in today’s Nisqually State Park was transferred into private ownership under various federal land disposal laws. Much of the land was homesteaded by Soo-Too-Lick, his family, and other ancestors of today’s Nisqually Indian Tribe members, who patented their claims in 1903.

Most of the rest was granted to the Northern Pacific (NP) Railroad in 1896. The US Congress had approved the grant in 1864, which eventually conveyed nearly 40 million acres of public domain lands to subsidize the construction of railroad lines into the western states. NP owner James J. Hill subsequently sold over 900,000 acres of the granted lands in Washington to Frederick Weyerhaeuser, who soon formed the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company from his newly acquired holdings.

The Weyerhaeuser Company acquired several of the Nisqually homesteads as well, and intensively managed the land as a plantation forest, eliminating the structural diversity and keystone species of the ancient forest that had surrounded Mashel Prairie.

Making a Park

In 1954, the University of Washington Bureau of Community Development’s “Operation Bootstrap” conducted community studies for the town of Eatonville and offered recommendations for economic revitalization, one of which was a proposed “Indian Henry State Park” to be developed at Mashel Prairie.  The proposal did not advance, but the community discussions sparked interest in the history of Mashel Prairie.

In 1985, the Washington State Legislature passed Substitute House Bill 323, directing the Department of Ecology to prepare an overall management plan for the Nisqually River, including the “enhancement of economic and recreational benefits.”

On June 12, 1987, Governor Booth Gardner signed legislation approving the Nisqually River Management Plan, which called for, among other things, a major destination park with river access at the confluence of the Nisqually and Mashel Rivers.

Beginning on August 27, 1991, with a purchase of more than 320 acres from the Weyerhaeuser Company, the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSPRC) began acquiring property in the area, with additional lands from Weyerhaeuser and others bringing the total to nearly 1,300 acres by 2013.

The acquired lands making up today’s Nisqually State Park form an arc surrounding Mashel Prairie and include the confluence of the Mashel and Nisqually Rivers, the site of the Mashel Massacre. The Nisqually Indian Tribe has purchased additional lands within the arc of the state park, including parcels within the original Mashel Prairie.

In 2014, the WSPRC signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Nisqually Indian Tribe detailing their common interest in protecting and interpreting the stories of the Nisqually region.

In 2019, Washington State determined that Nisqually State Park would be the first new state park created in many years. The WSPRC and Nisqually Indian Tribe agreed that Nisqually State Park will be designed to highlight interpretation of the story of the Squally-Absch through time and into the present.