The Puyallup Kept Its Dead—and an Old Belief Said It Always Would
A boy drowned in the Puyallup River; his father searched the muddy current in vain, while neighbors recalled an old belief that the river never gives up its dead.
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.
All efforts to locate the body of Willie Hogle, who was drowned in the Puyallup River Tuesday afternoon, have failed. A party headed by the boy's father has been searching the muddy waters of the river constantly since the accident occurred, but no trace of the body has been found. It is thought the body was carried into the bay by the swift current. Another theory advanced is that the boy's clothing caught in roots or brush at the bottom of the river and the body has since been covered with sand. Soon after the accident old residents of the vicinity expressed the belief that the remains would not be recovered. This echoed an old Indigenous belief that “The Puyallup never gives up its dead.”
“The Puyallup never gives up its dead.”
Tacoma's rivers have always been both lifeline and hazard, and the Puyallup's currents and sediment still complicate searches. The story's blend of grief and local folklore shows how tightly memory attaches to waterways—and how a river can become a character in its own right.
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