The Legend of the Palouse Giant
A towering, mysterious figure of the Palouse country is revealed as a man who used a simple trick of horse hide to fuel his fearsome reputation.
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.
There appeared on the streets of Colfax on Saturday a tall, muscular, gray-haired Indian. He was no less than six feet four and a half inches in height and was once famous among the Palouse Indians. The idea of carrying a blanket he long ago scorned, yet he had no more clothes on than would adorn a scarecrow in a cornfield. 'Old Man,' as he is known among his people, has the reputation of killing many a white man, and his greatest boast when quarreling is to refer his opponent to what purports to be white men's scalps that adorn the sides of his saddle. In reality, they are nothing more than pieces of horse hide placed there by himself. He is 60 years old and can see but little.
“He had no more clothes on than would adorn a scarecrow in a cornfield.”
This piece of frontier reporting reflects how settlers were fascinated by, yet deeply distanced from, the Indigenous people whose land they had seized. Today, these stories serve as a reminder of the complex lives lived in the shadows of the rapid colonization of Eastern Washington.
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