The Witch Doctor’s Bullet: A Love Triangle in Hoquiam
When a local Indian doctor claimed a young woman was bewitched to death, her grieving father took justice into his own hands, leaving a victim with a bullet in the shoulder and a story that captivated Aberdeen.
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.
A Red Siwash Intrigue.
Friday was brought to Hoquiam and incarcerated in the strong box of the city jail a siwash gentleman known as Mr. Otook, or "Big Head." He stood accused of having pumped a plug of lead into a fellow siwash with a deadly intent — John Clip, by name.
The story is an interesting one, as related by one acquainted with the manners and customs of the sons of the forest:
Otook was the proud father of a fair Indian maiden, who, quite recently, became ill and died in a day or two after the first attack. As the Indian is very suspicious as well as a superstitious creature, a sudden death must be inquired into; so the Indian doctor was soon consulted, and he decided that one John Clip had "shot the girl with some sort of siwash jargon," meaning, "bewitched" her.
The siwash manners and customs would, in case this were true—and if the doctor says so, it must be — allow the father of the late-lamented to dispose of the accused in the most approved fashion. Therefore, it is claimed that Otook gave his Winchester an early feed and with it hied himself to the vicinity of the community spring, where for some unknown reason it was supposed the guilty Indian would soon come for water.
He came. As he approached, some move of Otook's caused Clip to look up just as the electrical touch to be applied to Mr. Otook's paralyzer was about to act. Clip caught on to the trick that was aimed at him, and dodging quickly, received the missile in the left shoulder, which it passed through, without breaking a bone. It was a severe clip for poor Clip, and he fell to the ground in apparent great agony. However, it is found that he will recover, without doubt.
The stuff the Indian doctor said the girl was "shot" with comes as near "tomanowis" as we are able to comprehend the very intricate language of the gay and festive siwash.
This sort of doctrine gives the Indian doctor a fine opportunity to get rid of personally objectionable characters about the camp, and no doubt the "tomanowis" is often prepared by the sly old Indian doctor for his own purpose.
Otook appeared before Justice Warren on Tuesday and was bound over to appear before the supreme court at its next session.—Washingtonian.
This 1890 account reveals the tense friction between Indigenous legal traditions and colonial law in early Washington. While the newspaper frames the shooting as a superstitious crime, it highlights how traditional dispute resolution mechanisms were criminalized by the state, forcing local conflicts into the jurisdiction of white-appointed justices like Justice Warren.
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