Before the coming of White people each Umatilla family band was considered independent. Those groups that we today call "tribes" were really a number of different family units who spoke a common dialect that gathered together during the winter and other times throughout the yearly cycle. In the course of these get-togethers headmen, or leaders, from each family band gathered for council. If a headman or any individual was in disagreement with the group consensus, they could not be forced to follow it (Stern 1998). The headman or "chief" of a group was not a fixed individual; different people led at different times. Nor did these leaders have formal power over others; they were more like respected individuals among equals with considerable powers of persuasion (Teverbaugh 2000). So, those "chiefs" who signed treaties with the United States government were not qualified to speak for the many people who were affected by these agreements.

Most important to the Indians were the rights they reserved to fish, gather roots, berries, medicines, hunt game, and graze horses and cattle outside the reservation on the 6.4 million acres of their traditional homelands. Those rights were reserved to ensure that their future generations would have food and medicine, that they would be able to continue their traditions and customs.

Despite the fact that there were several interpreters helping with the treaty negotiations, the various parties did not leave the council grounds with the same understanding. Tauitau, Young Chief, leader of a band of Cayuse told Stevens, "The reason we could not understand you was that you selected this country for us to live in without our having any voice in the matter" (Slickpoo and Walker 1973:125).

Stevens (1855: 98) told the tribes at Walla Walla Council that they "will not be called according to the paper [treaty] to move on the reservation for two or three years." Yet, before the treaties were ratified, large invasions of goldseekers and homesteaders moved into the territory that had been set aside for these tribes. The treaty wasn't ratified until 1859. For years, many of the Umatilla and Walla Walla continued to follow their traditional seasonal round, refusing to move to the Umatilla Indian Reservation where they would be forced to abandon their life-ways for that of an American farmer (Stern 1998).

"To understand the tribal view of the treaties you have to start with the minutes because that's what was presented to the tribes, that's what they were agreeing to, not some document signed at the end of negotiations, but rather the talk. They even used that phrase a lot; if you look at the council minutes carefully, no Indian or tribal member there ever uses the word "treaty," they use the word "talk" typically. While there is a lot of correspondence between what was said and what was eventually written, they are not the same, and the tribal understanding necessarily must come from the minutes and not the document itself. The treaty is in the minutes and not in the document that the Senate ratified, from a tribal perspective." Dennis Colsen, Professor of Law, University of Idaho

"What shall we do at this council? We want you and ourselves to agree upon tracts of land where you will live; in those tracts of land we want each man who will work to have his own land, his own horses, his own cattle, and his own home for himself and his children. On each tract we want an agent to live who shall be your brother, and who shall protect you from bad white men.

"Then you the men will be farmers and mechanics, or you will be doctors and lawyers like white men; your women and your daughters will then teach their children, those who come after them to spin, to weave, to knit, to sew, and all the work of the house and lodges, you will have your own teachers, your own farmers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights and mechanics; besides this we want on each tract a saw mill and a grist mill.

"Now we want you to agree with us to such a state of things; you to have your tract with all these things; the rest to be the Great Father's for his white children." Gov. Isaac I. Stevens, 1855 Treaty Council

"And now while there is room to select for you a home where there are no white men living let us do so." General Palmer