Washington Territory: History, Treaties, and Statehood

Washington Territory was a federal territory of the United States that existed from 1853 to 1889, covering what is now the state of Washington along with, at various times, the northern Idaho panhandle and the part of Montana west of the Rockies. Congress created it by splitting the northern half of Oregon Territory after settlers north of the Columbia River petitioned for their own government, and President Millard Fillmore signed the Organic Act into law on March 2, 1853. Over the next 36 years the territory passed through treaty wars with Native nations, a constitutional showdown between a governor and a chief justice, two rounds of women’s suffrage won and lost, anti-Chinese expulsions, and the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad, before entering the Union as the 42nd state on November 11, 1889.

Why Settlers Pushed for a Separate Territory

By the early 1850s, settlers north of the Columbia River had a long list of grievances with Oregon’s territorial government in Salem. They held only two of 25 seats in the territorial legislature. Federal money for roads, mail, and law enforcement rarely reached them. Reaching a district judge or county clerk’s office from the north was described as more time-consuming and expensive than a round trip from St. Louis to Boston.¹ The Superintendent of Indian Affairs had never visited the region, and settlers viewed the Hudson’s Bay Company as monopolizing local commerce.

Two conventions drove the separation movement. On August 29, 1851, nineteen delegates met at Cowlitz Landing and sent Congress a memorial asking for a new “Columbia Territory.”² A larger gathering followed on November 25, 1852, when 44 delegates assembled at the Monticello Hotel on the Cowlitz River and adopted a memorial modeled on the Declaration of Independence, praying that Congress organize the district “under a Territorial Government to be named the ‘Territory of Columbia.'”³ Delegates included Michael T. Simmons, John R. Jackson, Arthur Denny, and Seth Catlin, a former Illinois legislator who presided. Historian Bill Speidel later characterized the convention as partly a tactical move by men looking for federal patronage and government jobs.¹

In Congress, Oregon’s territorial delegate Joseph Lane championed the petition. Lane and Oregon’s Democratic leadership backed the split, calculating that cutting loose the northern settlers would make the remaining territory easier to govern and speed Oregon’s own path to statehood.² Lane introduced the bill on December 6, 1852, and it passed the House 128 to 29. During debate, Representative Richard Stanton of Kentucky offered a successful amendment changing the proposed name from “Columbia” to “Washington,” arguing that “Columbia” would be confused with the District of Columbia.³ The Senate passed the bill on March 2, 1853, and President Fillmore signed it the same day.⁴

Timing mattered. Had settlers waited for the better roads and steamboat service that arrived later in the decade, the main justifications for separation would have faded, and the region might have remained part of a single, undivided Oregon.²

What Land Washington Territory Covered

At its creation, Washington Territory took in all of present-day Washington, the northern Idaho panhandle, and the part of Montana west of the Continental Divide.⁴ The southern boundary ran up the Columbia River from its mouth to the 46th parallel near Fort Walla Walla, then east along that latitude to the summit of the Rockies, and north to the Canadian border at the 49th parallel.²

The territory briefly grew in 1859. When Oregon became a state, the leftover portion of old Oregon Territory, including what would become southern Idaho, was attached to Washington.⁵ A string of subtractions followed:

On March 4, 1863, Congress created Idaho Territory, stripping away the eastern mining regions and all of modern Montana west of the Rockies. This set Washington’s eastern boundary roughly where it stands today.⁵
In 1864, Montana Territory was carved from eastern Idaho.
In 1868, Wyoming Territory was created, finalizing Idaho’s borders and ending adjustments to the land Washington had once claimed.⁵

How the Territory Was Governed

The Organic Act created a government mostly appointed from Washington, D.C., with limited self-rule for settlers. Isaac Stevens was appointed the first territorial governor on March 17, 1853, and took up his duties in Olympia that November.⁶

The governor was appointed by the president with Senate consent for a four-year term, and also served as commander-in-chief of the territorial militia, superintendent of Indian affairs, and pardon authority. A territorial secretary, also appointed, kept records and stood in for the governor when needed.⁷

The legislature was bicameral: a nine-member Council serving three-year terms and a House of Representatives initially set at eighteen members with one-year terms. It could legislate on “all rightful subjects” not inconsistent with federal law, but Congress could disapprove any territorial law. The assembly was specifically barred from incorporating banks, borrowing money, and taxing federal property. Sessions were capped at 60 days, with 100 allowed for the first.⁷

The judiciary consisted of a Supreme Court with a chief justice and two associate justices appointed for four-year terms, along with district courts, probate courts, and justices of the peace. Appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court were available in federal-question cases and in matters where the amount in controversy exceeded $2,000. The territory elected a non-voting delegate to the U.S. House every two years, and the federal Treasury paid all government salaries and expenses.⁷

Because governors were presidential appointees, the office drew some unusual figures. Fayette McMullen, appointed by President James Buchanan in 1857, reportedly took the job in part to obtain a legislative divorce from his wife in Virginia. His successor Richard Gholson, a staunch Democrat, resigned after Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 election rather than serve under a Republican.⁸ Non-voting delegates to Congress included Columbia Lancaster (the first, 1853–1855), Stevens himself (1857–1859, before leaving to fight for the Union), Seattle founder Arthur Denny in the mid-1860s, and John Beard Allen, the final delegate, who was elected to the U.S. Senate at statehood.⁹

Stevens, the Treaties, and the Indian Wars

Nothing from the territorial era has left a longer legal shadow than Governor Isaac Stevens’ treaty councils with Native nations. Appointed simultaneously as governor, Indian agent, and chief surveyor for a transcontinental railroad, Stevens moved to extinguish tribal land claims and open the region to white settlement. Between December 1854 and October 1855, he presided over treaty councils covering roughly 100,000 square miles.¹⁰

Seven primary treaties came out of this period, collectively called the Stevens Treaties:

Treaty of Medicine Creek (1854), with the Nisqually, Puyallup, and other southern Puget Sound tribes.
Treaty of Point Elliott (1855), signed by representatives of fifteen tribes and bands, including the Lummi and Skagit.
Treaty of Point No Point (1855), with the S’Klallam.
Treaty of Neah Bay (1855), with the Makah, securing fishing, sealing, and whaling rights at “usual and accustomed grounds.”
Treaty with the Yakama (1855).
Treaty with the Walla Walla (1855), reserving tribal fishing rights in reservation streams and at traditional fishing sites.
Treaty of Olympia (1856), with the Quinault and Quileute.¹¹

The negotiations were deeply flawed. Stevens conducted them through Chinook Jargon, a trade language with fewer than 500 words, which historians have described as inadequate for complex legal concepts. He appointed “chiefs” and “subchiefs” to represent tribes, sometimes over the objections of actual leaders. Witnesses reported Stevens saying, “Tell the chiefs if they don’t sign this treaty they will walk in blood knee deep.”¹² Chief Joseph’s band refused to attend the Walla Walla council, and the Quileute later denied having agreed to sell their land, saying the agreement had been about peace and trade.¹⁰ The Senate ratified the treaties, and President James Buchanan signed them in 1859.

Fighting began almost immediately. The Puget Sound Treaty War of 1855–1856 pitted U.S. Army regulars and territorial volunteers against tribes affected by the Medicine Creek Treaty. The conflict ended when Stevens capitulated at Fox Island on August 4, 1856, promising larger reservations to the Nisqually, Puyallup, and Muckleshoot peoples. That settlement restored nearly 25,000 acres to those tribes.¹³

The Martial Law Crisis of 1856

The Indian War produced one of the sharpest confrontations between executive and judicial power in American territorial history. On April 3, 1856, Governor Stevens declared martial law over Pierce County, alleging that local farmers, many of them former Hudson’s Bay Company employees, were aiding hostile tribes. The proclamation was aimed at preventing the courts from issuing writs of habeas corpus for people the military had detained on treason charges.¹⁴

On May 7, 1856, an armed force of territorial volunteers entered the courthouse at Steilacoom, arrested Chief Justice Edward Lander from the bench while court was in session, seized the court records, and took the judge and his clerk to Olympia under military guard.¹⁴ Citizens and members of the bar held public meetings condemning the governor’s actions as an “outrage” and a “usurpation of power.”

After Stevens released Lander and narrowed martial law to Pierce County, the judge reconvened court, issued new habeas corpus writs for the imprisoned farmers, and cited Stevens for contempt. When a U.S. Marshal tried to serve the contempt order, Stevens ejected him and had Lander arrested a second time. Chief Justice Francis Chenoweth then ordered the Pierce County Sheriff to raise a 50-man posse. The standoff ended when militia officers refused to preside over a court-martial of the settlers, citing a lack of jurisdiction.¹⁵

Stevens eventually released the farmers and the judge. Lander fined him $50 for contempt, which the governor’s supporters paid. The territorial legislature and the U.S. Senate both censured Stevens, and the Secretary of State formally notified him that his conduct did not meet with the president’s approval.¹⁵ Stevens went on to serve as the territory’s congressional delegate before dying as a Union major general in the Civil War.

Land Laws and the Northern Pacific Railroad

Federal land laws shaped who settled Washington Territory. The Donation Land Claim Act of 1850, extended to Washington by the Organic Act, granted 320 acres to male citizens who cultivated land for four years, with married settlers able to double that by filing a claim in the wife’s name. By the time the act expired, 985 land bounties totaling 290,215 acres had been granted in the territory.¹⁶ The Homestead Act of 1862 opened far more land, letting citizens claim 160 acres with a five-year residency requirement. Later statutes, including the Timber Culture Act, the Desert Land Act, and the Dawes Act, continued to channel land into private hands and, in the Dawes Act’s case, opened reservation lands to white settlement.

The Northern Pacific Railroad transformed the territory more than any single law. Chartered by Congress in 1864 with the largest land grant in American history (initially 60 million acres, ultimately reduced to nearly 40 million), the railroad became the region’s most powerful private landowner.¹⁷ The line reached Spokane and Pasco in 1881, and the connection to Portland was celebrated on September 8, 1883, when president Henry Villard drove a golden spike at Gold Creek, Montana. The Cascade tunnel through Stampede Pass was finished in 1888, bringing the first direct train to Puget Sound.¹⁸

Tacoma was chosen as the western terminus over Seattle and Olympia, largely for its deep-water access at Commencement Bay and vacant waterfront land. The railroad distributed millions of promotional pamphlets across the eastern United States and Europe to recruit settlers and offered “homeseekers’ round-trip fares” that drove waves of migration. It also consumed 20 to 25 percent of annual timber production between the 1870s and 1900 for ties, bridges, and fuel, accelerating the logging industry.¹⁹ Its political reach was so pervasive that delegates at the 1889 constitutional convention tried, with mixed success, to rein it in.

Women’s Suffrage Granted and Revoked

Washington Territory had one of the most turbulent suffrage records of any American jurisdiction. In 1854, a proposal to let women vote failed by a single vote in the territorial legislature, which then passed a mandate explicitly barring women from the polls.²⁰

The cause revived after Susan B. Anthony and Abigail Scott Duniway toured Washington and Oregon in 1871, which led to the formation of the Washington Woman Suffrage Association. In 1883, the territorial legislature passed a bill granting women full voting rights. Women voted in territorial elections for four years. Then, in 1887, the territorial Supreme Court struck down the law. The legislature passed a second suffrage bill in 1888, which was also overturned. The repeals were driven largely by the territory’s liquor lobby, which saw women voters as a threat to alcohol sales.²⁰ The question would not be permanently settled until 1910, when a state constitutional amendment guaranteed women the right to vote.

The Anti-Chinese Expulsions of 1885–1886

The mid-1880s brought a wave of anti-Chinese violence across the Pacific Northwest, with Washington Territory at its center. In the Tacoma Expulsion of 1885, Chinese residents were forcibly driven from the city, an action fueled by national anti-Chinese sentiment and organized by labor groups including the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor. The Tacoma events touched off similar purges across the region, including the expulsion of Chinese residents from Oregon City in 1886.²¹ The years 1885 and 1886 marked a peak of coordinated anti-Chinese group actions across the American West.

Population Growth

Washington Territory’s population grew slowly at first, then exploded with the railroad and federal land policies. Census figures:

1860: 11,594
1870: 23,955 (a 107% increase)
1880: 75,116 (a 214% increase)
1890: 349,390 (a 365% increase, reflecting the railroad era)²²

The territory covered roughly 66,880 square miles. At the time of the 1853 division, the non-Indigenous population north of the Columbia was only about 4,000.⁶ The 1890 census also enumerated 7,842 people on reservations, 7,526 of them Indigenous, who were counted under a special provision of the census act but excluded from the general population total at the time.²²

Becoming the 42nd State

After 36 years as a territory, Washington’s admission came together quickly once Congress acted. On February 22, 1889, President Grover Cleveland signed the Enabling Act, which authorized Washington, along with North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana, to form state constitutions and governments.²³

Seventy-five delegates were elected from 25 voting districts to attend a constitutional convention. Each district sent two delegates from the majority party and one from a minority party, which effectively guaranteed Republican dominance. The delegates included 21 lawyers, 13 farmers, 6 merchants, 6 doctors, 5 bankers, and an assortment of cattlemen, teachers, editors, loggers, and one minister.²⁴ John P. Hoyt, a territorial Supreme Court justice, presided.²⁵

The convention met in Olympia from July 4 through August 22, 1889. Delegates borrowed heavily from the constitutions of older states and from a model document provided by a Portland resident. Major debates centered on the disposition of school and state lands, regulation of tidelands, and the power of railroads. The delegates prohibited free railway passes for elected officials but did not create a strong elected commission to regulate rail rates. The finished constitution placed significant limits on the legislature, distributed authority across many elected offices, and included a complex amending formula that the State Grange criticized as too difficult.²⁴

To keep the most controversial questions from sinking the main document, delegates split them off as separate ballot items. Voters considered women’s suffrage and prohibition on their own; both were rejected. The main constitution was approved on October 1, 1889, by a vote of 40,152 to 11,879.²⁶

On November 11, 1889, President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation admitting Washington as the 42nd state. The news reached Olympia by telegram from Secretary of State James G. Blaine to Governor Elisha P. Ferry at 5:27 p.m. The governor paid 61 cents to receive it.²⁶

1
Washington State Historical Society. The Monticello Convention
2
Washington State Historical Society. The Creation of Washington Territory
3
Washington State Parks. Monticello Convention State Park Heritage Site History
4
SeattlePI. Washington Territory: A Photo Look Back
5
Idaho State Historical Society. The Boise Claim
6
Oregon Encyclopedia. Washington Territory, 1853
7
Washington State Legislature. Territorial Government
8
Fox 13 Seattle. Washington Governors History
9
Washington Secretary of State. An Overview of Congressional Representation
10
University of Washington. Treaties and Reservations
11
University of Washington School of Law. Washington Territory Treaties
12
Northwest Power and Conservation Council. Indian Treaties
13
The News Tribune. The Puget Sound Treaty War
14
Washington Secretary of State. United Message — Stevens Martial Law Documents
15
HistoryLink. Governor Stevens Declares Martial Law in Pierce County
16
University of Washington. Homesteading and Land Laws
17
Northwest Power and Conservation Council. Railroads in the Pacific Northwest
18
Library of Congress. Mapping the Northern Pacific Railroad
19
University of Washington. The Northern Pacific Railroad
20
Washington Secretary of State. Women’s Suffrage Timeline
21
The Tacoma Method. Mapping Anti-Chinese Violence
22
U.S. Census Bureau. Census Bulletin No. 52 — Population of Washington
23
Washington State Legislature. The Enabling Act
24
Washington State Legislature. 1889 Constitutional Convention
25
Washington State Courts. The Supreme Court
26
Washington State Historical Society. Statehood for Washington