The Trunk in the Belltown Earth
Two prospectors looking for a brickyard site uncovered more than clay when they stumbled upon a hidden trunk containing a man’s remains.
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.
Yesterday, two men named Childs and Eustis, while looking for a suitable place to start a brick yard near Belltown, discovered the corner of a trunk sticking out of the earth. They opened the trunk and found the body of a man inside covered with a white woolen blanket; there were also some other articles in the trunk, including two guns. From the manner in which the body and the other articles were disposed in the trunk, the belief was entertained that the prospectors had simply unearthed the remains of some poor native man who had but recently departed for the happy hunting grounds. Two men went out to the place today, but failed to discover the corpse.
“From the manner in which the body and the other articles were disposed in the trunk, the belief was entertained that the prospectors had simply unearthed the remains of some poor siwash.”
Belltown today is a densely populated urban neighborhood of high-rises and boutiques, but this 1878 report reminds us that the city's early days were marked by frontier lawlessness and unmarked graves. It is a haunting precursor to the way Seattle’s rapid development has frequently disturbed the physical remnants of the past.
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