Wright's Horse Slaughter: The End of Plateau Resistance
Near Spokane, Washington
In the late summer of eighteen fifty-eight, Colonel George Wright led United States Army forces through the Inland Northwest to crush resistance from the Palouse, Spokane, and Coeur d'Alene peoples following their defeat of an earlier column at the Battle of Four Lakes. After his victories, Wright captured roughly nine hundred horses belonging to the defeated nations and, on the bank of the river near this site, ordered them all slaughtered. The act was calculated and deliberate: horses were the foundation of Plateau peoples' mobility, economy, and warfare.
Without them, sustained resistance was impossible. Wright then hanged several tribal leaders as war criminals. The campaign broke organized armed resistance in the Inland Northwest for a generation.
The marker here stands at one of the most consequential and brutal episodes in the region's history.
