The snowflakes may as well have been tears for events past during the annual Leschi Honor Walk in Lakewood on Thursday. While it was frigid in Fort Steilacoom Park, dozens of members of the community showed to honor past, present and future.
” I’m glad to see everybody make it out here in this cold weather,” greeted Hanford McCloud, a Storyteller for the Nisqually Tribe.
The annual event commemorates the life of Nisqually Tribe Chief Leschi, who was hung on Feb. 19, 1858, in what is now Lakewood. He was hung at or near what is now Leschi Road in a residential neighborhood several blocks east of the park.
Leschi’s story is complex, but it involves civilian authorities who wanted him killed for an act of war. The instigator was former Territorial Gov. Isaac Stevens who had insisting on putting Tribes on places they could not live. That led to armed conflict, and Stevens later decided to offer better lands.
US Army officers and many settlers said Leschi had not committed the particular killing involved, and even if he had, it was during a war that had since ended. It took two trials before Leschi was found guilty, and then, as one person at the time put it, Leschi was “judicially murdered.”
His connection to Lakewood has to do with where he was held for his trials. Leschi’s brother had been murdered before trial in the governor’s own office. Army officers did not want Leschi murdered so they offered to hold him at Fort Steilacoom. The site of his confinement is roughly where some major pipework was recently laid for the new Western State Hospital complex.
The second trial was held until Leschi was found guilty, but the Army refused to allow him to be executed at the fort, now a museum, or on the fort’s grounds, now the park. And that’s why the civilians rode him off toward Lake Steilacoom to kill Leschi.
You can’t tell Leschi’s story without getting into all that, but it’s not what was at the top of mind of people who attended the Leschi Honor Walk. Leschi is remembered as someone who stood for people when their land was being stripped away, and he is also a symbol of leadership, revitalization, and more.
Leschi’s mother, who came to Nisqually from the Yakima Nation in Eastern Washington, helped bring horses to the Nisqually. Leschi was not surprisingly a skilled rider, and thus horses today are a powerful symbol. The Nisqually Tribe has a horse program involving young people, and one rider was moved to tears before the walk as she described how important her horse and that program have been for her.
The director of her program further explained the significance of the horses, in leading the walk, with their riders.
“Horses were used for travel, trade, hunting, and communications between Tribes. Horsemanship was a source of pride and respect,” said Keoni Kalama, manager of the Nisqually Tribe’s Medicine River Ranch. “The bond between rider and horses reflect balance, responsibility and trust – values that were central to tribal communities.
“For Chief Leschi and his people, protecting their land also meant protecting their way of life. That included their deep relationship with horses, even in the face of injustice and hardship. That cultural identity endures through our blood through our songs through our traditions, our ceremonies,” Kalama said. “Today, remembering Chief Leschi, means honoring traditions, resilience, and horse culture that continue to carry forward the spirit of his people.”
Pointing to the young horse riders, Kalama continued, “These young ones, right here, are the spirit of his people.”
And then the walk began with a drizzle of snowflakes dotting the air.
Editor’s note: If you’re on Facebook, the Nisqually Tribe did a nice writeup with great photos of the event: https://www.facebook.com/nisqually/posts/pfbid02rFZfTQhW16h51WMAiZQxqXj1gFSVuAatc6yqNAU6rAD6gqTcdmS8XAmSF3QT1RK4l
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This pattern continued during the Dakota War of 1862, when more than 300 Dakota men were sentenced to death. Abraham Lincoln, under political and public pressure, reduced the sentences to 38 executions the largest mass execution in U.S. history. Across the country, legal systems often failed Indigenous peoples, with trials that were rushed, biased, or entirely unfair.
These executions were part of a larger strategy of control. By punishing resistance with death, the U.S. government sought to weaken Indigenous sovereignty and make room for settler expansion. Chief Leschi’s story is a reminder that violence against Native peoples was often sanctioned at the highest levels of government. It challenges Americans to confront a history in which law, power, and land claims often outweighed justice.