A Settler's Bullet at Ozette: A Killing Over Four Sealskins
A German homesteader shoots a Makah man near Neah Bay, and the tribes of the Olympic Peninsula begin to talk about taking revenge.
LAPUSH, May 27.—Special.—Henry Anderson, a German aged about 58 years, shot and killed Che-ka-do, an Indian, at Ozette, twenty miles from Lapush and the same distance from Neah Bay, at noon last Friday. The trouble came in a dispute about four sealskins. Reports are conflicting. It is likely Anderson fired in self-defense. Anderson has a claim on the land east of Ozette, just back of the Indian village. He is said to be a steady, sober and industrious man. The Indians have annoyed him by breaking down his fences and stealing from him. He has been so discouraged by their depredations that he has felt that he would be obliged to vacate his claim. The Indians are waxing hot, and some threaten to shoot Boston men. They have been advised to take a legal course, but that is too slow for them.
“The Indians are waxing hot, and some threaten to shoot Boston men. They have been advised to take a legal course, but that is too slow for them.”
The Ozette killing laid bare a fault line running through the Olympic Peninsula: a settler's paper 'claim' set against a Makah village that had lived on the land for generations. Read today, it is one small scene in the long dispossession of Indigenous territory — and a reminder that words like 'self-defense' and 'depredations' were the era's shorthand for a conflict the law was built to lose.
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