Bloody Brawl at Spencer’s Saloon
A minor prank against a patron spirals into a violent knife fight among loggers in North Yakima.
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.
On Sunday afternoon, a row occurred at Spencer’s saloon, when some loggers were the aggressors. It commenced by one of them slapping a pie in the face of a colored man who was sitting in one of the rooms of the saloon. This act led to blows, in which the colored man was badly worsted. Dave Correll, being present, undertook to keep the men from belaboring the colored man, whereupon bottles, beer glasses, and chairs were hurled at Dave, who was badly beaten about the face and head. The colored man, as soon as he was released, left the scene of action and has not been seen since. A knife was used on the assaulter. Ed Emerson, Duncan McCormack, and Zack McCormack were the names of the parties engaged in the brawl. Ed Emerson was the most seriously hurt, being stabbed in the skull; Duncan McCormack received a slash on the scalp and a slash in the left arm, severing an artery and vein. His ear was divided by a thrust of the knife from behind. He had a narrow escape from death. Zack McCormack received some cuts about the head and a thrust in the neck.
“Duncan McCormack received a slash on the scalp and a slash in the left arm, severing an artery and vein. His ear was divided by a thrust of the knife from behind.”
This incident highlights the pervasive, casual violence often found in frontier-era saloons, exacerbated by racial tension. Today, North Yakima’s downtown district serves as a hub of civic life, but accounts like this remind us of the often volatile, unpoliced nature of early social spaces.
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