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This chapter explores the dynamic and cooperative nature of oral traditions by analyzing an account of Leschi's life as told by several Native storytellers over the course of a century. Nisquallies claimed to have maintained a story of Leschi over generations that served as a counter narrative to non-Indians' history while transmitting unique values. From Native perspectives, Leschi's story can impact people and teach them how to fulfill responsibilities to their ancestors and children. The assertion of a counter narrative, despite the significant amount of borrowing and reciprocal influences in histories of Leschi, represents a claim to a separate Nisqually identity. The chapter shows how “history” and “justice” are culturally situated in Native memory traditions and can function as a crucial element in tribal political action.

This chapter shows how changing Nisqually conceptions of tribal leadership and treaty rights developed in parallel with their commemorations for Leschi. In three periods of political crisis for the tribe, Nisqually leaders invoked Leschi as a symbol for various tribal political strategies, from accommodation to direct defiance of U.S. demands. The Historical Court was another commemorative event for Nisquallies in which the act of testifying about Leschi's leadership was inseparable from their interpretations of tribal self-determination and treaty rights.

This chapter focuses on the contested and malleable nature of law in Leschi's 1857 conviction and 2004 exoneration. Territorial settlers and officials in the 1850s seized on the figure of Leschi to work through the proper use of U.S. law in frontier wars of expansion. Leschi was categorized simultaneously as a criminal and as a warrior, reflecting non-Indians' deep-seated impulse to see settlers as both victims and victors and the nation as both pure and powerful. Their inconsistent application of law during war was central to the petitioners' case for Leschi's exoneration in the Historical Court. This argument was well-fashioned for 2004, when the so-called War on Terror prompted similar questions about the rights of combatants. In the 1850s and in 2004, non-Indians used the mythic figure of Leschi to legitimize law and define the nation as consistently law-abiding even in the midst of wartime legal exceptions.

This chapter argues that the colonial archive, which made the Historical Court possible, is also haunted by colonial violence that the court could not address. The legal framing of Leschi's story allowed for a sort of correction for Leschi, but there was no comparable forum to address the extralegal assassination of Leschi's brother Quiemuth. Indeed, the Nisqually petitioners' success in Leschi's case may have simultaneously planted seeds of hope and closed off avenues for addressing other kinds of historical injuries.

This introductory chapter begins by describing events in 1855 that led to the execution of Chief Leschi, a Nisqually Indian leader, for murder. It then details the convening of the Washington State Historical Court of Inquiry and Justice in December 2004, which conducted a review of Leschi's case to decide not only what happened in the 1850s but also what they should do about what happened. The chapter then sets out the book's purpose, which is to examine the epistemologies of justice, memory, and history at play in the Historical Court. The aim is to deconstruct the Historical Court as an exercise of assimilating different interpretations of the past into a single historical “truth” and definition of justice. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter presents concluding thoughts about Chief Leschi's case and the Historical Court. The Historical Court revealed the tensions and contradictions of historical justice. It represented a victory for Leschi's descendants, a call to action for Native elders, a boon to legal authority, and a confirmation of American settlers' just intentions and liberal achievements in the region. Leschi symbolized another set of contradictions. He was a model for resistance to U.S. domination and an example of a peaceful arbiter who valued cooperation and accommodation. Leschi signified the enduring active presence of the past as well as an attempt to seize control of it, a representative of a shared, multicultural collective memory and evidence of its impossibility in a settler state.