1877 Editorial Urged Crackdown on Native Dance Houses
An 1877 Weekly Puget Sound Dispatch editorial called for a citizen-led campaign against dance houses it linked to liquor sales and disease in early Seattle.
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.
The practice of selling liquor to Indians is one that should be prevented at all hazards; and if preventive punishments cannot be provided, then those of a vindictive nature must be resorted to. The squaw dance-houses have been the curse of this place and Victoria, too. They have been plague-sores upon the good name of our fair young city, and have scattered the seed of disease and misery in every direction. A white man is bad enough when his brain is crazed by the fumes of bad liquor, but an Indian in the same situation is infinitely worse. If necessary, let a citizens' league be gotten up to put a stop to this abominable traffic, which may yet burn the city for us.
This 1877 editorial highlights the intersection of local xenophobia and moral policing that shaped Seattle's early urban development. By framing Indigenous people and immigrant-heavy social spaces as existential threats to the 'fair name' of the city, the Dispatch channeled civic anxiety into calls for vigilantism, a pattern that would repeat throughout the 1880s.
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