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Rename Wright street
I think it wrong that Spokane honors a tyrant in the naming of a street. I’m referring to Fort George Wright Drive (“Knowing Wright from wrong,” The Spokesman-Review, May 17). Driving down that drive somehow seems akin to breaking bread with the devil.
I know Col. George Wright was sent in 1858 to avenge the defeat Col. Edward Steptoe suffered at the hands of the Indians. But what Wright did can only be called a massacre. Killing 800 of the Indians’ horses; luring Indians to what is now Latah Creek under the guise of discussing terms of surrender, then hanging Chief Qualchan and others; leaving a trail “marked by slaughter and devastation,” as Wright bragged. These are not acts of a military man I want to honor.
It’s disappointing that in the 1990s the leadership and faculty of Spokane Falls Community College overwhelmingly opposed renaming that drive. Then-history professor Rudy Alexander said Wright “and the fort are two separate issues and neither should be diminished in an attempt to sanitize history.”
What kind of fuzzy-headed thinking is that? Ceasing to honor a tyrant is not at all analogous to sanitizing history. Let the street renaming begin. Chief Garry Drive, anyone?
Ron Krueger
Spokane