The territory of Washington had been cut away from Oregon at its own request and with Oregon's consent in 1853. It had no great population and was the subject of no agricultural boom as Oregon had been, but the small settlements on Puget Sound and around Olympia were too far from the Willamette country for convenient government. When Oregon was admitted in 1859, Washington was made to include all the Oregon country outside the state, embracing the present Washington and Idaho, portions of Montana and Wyoming, and extending to the continental divide. Through it ran the overland trail from Fort Hall almost to Walla Walla. Because of its urging Congress built a new wagon road that was passable by 1860 from Fort Benton, on the upper Missouri, to the junction of the Columbia and Snake. Farther east the active business of the American Fur Company had by 1859 established steamboat communication from St. Louis to Fort Benton, so that an overland route to rival the old Platte trail was now available. In eastern Washington the most important of the Indians were the Nez Percés, whose peaceful habits and friendly disposition had been noted since the days of Lewis and Clark, and who had permitted their valley of the Snake to become a main route to Oregon. Treaties with these had been made in 1855 by Governor Stevens, in accordance with which most of the tribe were in 1860 living on their reserve at the junction of the Clearwater and Snake, and were fairly prosperous. Here as elsewhere was the specific agreement that no whites save government employees should be allowed in the Indian Country; but in the summer of 1861 the news that gold had been found along the Clearwater brought the agreement to naught. Gold had actually been discovered the summer before. In the spring of 1861 pack trains from Walla Walla brought a horde of miners east over the range, while steamboats soon found their way up the Snake. In the fork between the Clearwater and Snake was a good landing where, in the autumn of 1861, sprang up the new Lewiston, named in honor of the great explorer, acting as centre of life for five thousand miners in the district, and showing by its very existence on the Indian reserve the futility of treaty restrictions in the face of the gold fever. The troubles of the Indian department were great. "To attempt to restrain miners would be, to my mind, like attempting to restrain the whirlwind," reported Superintendent Kendall. "The history of California, Australia, Frazer river, and even of the country of which I am now writing, furnishes abundant evidence of the attractive power of even only reported gold discoveries.