Justice After the Murder of Skamowee
The discovery of a body in the Yakima River leads to the arrest of a man known as 'Pumps' for a brutal slaying.
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.
During the fall, the Indian Skamowee went missing from the reservation. His friends began to suspect a man known as Pumps, who had been considered responsible for Skamowee’s disappearance. Though Pumps denied knowledge, his tracks near the river bank led to a search. Three Indians discovered a place where a body had been tied to a tree near the Yakima River. When they returned with a search party, the body had been removed, but wagon tracks leading from the bank suggested the murderer had moved the body to a point lower down the river and dumped it in. On Saturday, a rancher of Parker Bottom saw a body floating in the river; it was identified as Skamowee. The head of the corpse was covered with a towel tied behind the ears. Pumps was immediately arrested and imprisoned, and a coroner's jury found he had murdered Skamowee.
“The head of the corpse was covered with a towel tied behind the ears. The flesh was well eaten away by the action of the water. But identification was easy.”
Historical accounts of crimes involving Indigenous people in 19th-century Washington are often the only remaining records of lives otherwise erased by the colonial archive. This case reflects both the violence Indigenous communities faced and the efforts within those communities to seek accountability through the legal systems of the time.
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