The Mayor's Midnight Pyre
When smallpox struck an Indigenous chief in 1877, the mayor of a nascent Seattle turned to fire to stop the contagion.
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.
It is not generally known that to Seattle belongs the honor of having had the first case of scientific cremation in the Northwest. The subject was 'Chief Mose,' who died alone in a remote cabin during the 1877 smallpox epidemic. Dr. G. A. Weed, then mayor and health officer, found the body in a deserted logging shanty near Lake Washington, on the spot where the Leschi Park pavilion now stands. Faced with the difficulty of securing help to bury a smallpox victim, the mayor filled the cabin with wood and brush and set it aflame. The fire grew into a terrifying conflagration, threatening the surrounding forest. The mayor, acting alone, used an oyster can to scoop water from the lake, dampening the fire and executing a 'war dance' to stomp out sparks creeping into the timber. When the fire died, only bleached bone remained. Later, during the same epidemic, the mayor also quarantined the 'Mad House' near the gas works, which became a pesthouse until it eventually burned down.
“The mayor occasionally varying the performance by wildly executing a war dance upon the little tongues of fire that were creeping toward the woods.”
This account reflects the desperate public health measures of Seattle's early years, when the city was still a frontier town fighting invisible enemies. The location at Leschi Park is now a beloved waterfront destination, a far cry from the dense, 'African solitude' and primitive wilderness described in 1893.
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