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100 years ago in Spokane: A tribal leader’s quest for his ancestral lands began

 (Spokane Daily Chronicle archives)

The Spokane Daily Chronicle reported that “Peo Peo Tah Likt, chief of the Nez Perce” was in Spokane attempting to locate some Chief Joseph documents that might establish the tribe’s title to lands in the Wallowa Valley.

Chief Joseph and his band were driven out of the Wallowa country and eventually defeated, but he and Spokane attorney R.B. Scott had earlier pursued legal claims to their ancestral lands. Those claims were never granted, but now Peo Peo Tah Likt was in Spokane seeking to talk to Scott and find the old documents.

However, he soon discovered that Scott was long dead. Yet he still held out hope that the documents could be found.

It was important to find them, because the chief was hoping to “lead the members of his tribe back back across the Snake this summer to the hunting grounds of old in Oregon, where he was born and the spirits of the Nez Perce are said to dwell.”

He said he hoped to return “to a little farm in the Imnaha Canyon,” as did several other aged tribal members.

“In June we go to the Imnaha,” he said. “We love the Imnaha. It is very beautiful to us.”

He hoped to take up the old title claims with the Idaho and Washington congressional delegations.

From the school beat: Spokane school officials reacted with outrage to a charge by Superior Court Judge R.M. Webster that immorality was rampant in high schools.

They said that only a “tiny fraction of one percent” of high school students were responsible for any problems, and “it is time to stop the propaganda relative to immorality in the schools.”

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