A Fatal Drunken Brawl at Oiequa
A tragic shooting follows a night of drinking, leaving one man dead and his brother headed for a second-degree murder conviction.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In the superior court this evening, Frank La Quash was convicted of murder in the second degree for the killing of his brother, Seymour La Quash, at Oiequa, November 27. The murder took place after the La Quash brothers, in company with two other Indigenous men, Capt. Peter and Seymour, were in an old barn near Oiequa drinking bad whisky. The whisky ran out and Seymour agreed to get some more. He returned with the firewater, and the two brothers engaged in a fight, in which the murdered man was bested. The survivor later retrieved a rifle and shot his brother through the heart with a 40-60 Winchester. The murderer later claimed he did not know he had killed his brother for a long time. Capt. Peter stated that after the shooting, La Quash lay down beside the corpse and went to sleep, only realizing what he had done upon waking. The murderer was born on Newaukum prairie and is about 23 years old.
“I did not know I had killed my brother for a long time. I did not intend to kill him. I was so drunk I did not know when I did it.”
This 1892 report reflects the era's tendency to pathologize Indigenous subjects while detailing the violent consequences of unregulated liquor sales in frontier settlements. It serves as a reminder of the historical volatility of labor and social conditions in rural Washington during the late 19th century.
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