We pay you for your land and stay amongst you folks : settler colonialism and indigenous power in Southwest Washington Territory

Against a teleological narrative of inevitable U.S. hegemony in what is now the southwest corner of Washington State, this work argues that settler colonialism has been a co-creation of local indigenous peoples and settlers that has emerged from the mid-nineteenth century onward through continuous negotiations of power and influence. The uneasy co-existence between metanarratives of U.S. westward expansion and local narratives produced through the colonial encounter give rise to productive contradictions that provide materials to reframe the dominant narratives that continue to naturalize settler colonial power today