Vandals Wreck Indian Canoe
Youths on the Seattle waterfront destroy an Indigenous person's boat for sport.
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.
Some mischievous boys congregated on Crawford Harrington's wharf early last evening, and rolled a large piece of timber, lying near, up to the edge of the wharf for the purpose of rolling it over on one of the Indian canoes which were passing under the wharf into the slip. After waiting a while, they saw what they considered a fine opportunity to put their nefarious plans into execution, and let it go. It struck full force across a canoe occupied by an Indian, and only a short distance from the place where he was sitting. The poor fellow was terribly alarmed, as it took him all by surprise, and came near capsizing his frail craft. As it was, the canoe was considerably damaged, and will probably cost its occupant the labor of making a new one. It is high time a stop be put to such transactions in some way or other.
“It is high time a stop be put to such transactions in some way or other.”
Harassment of Indigenous people on the Seattle waterfront was a recurring feature of colonial life in 1876. This incident highlights the casual violence used by settlers to exclude and endanger Native people trying to navigate their ancestral waterways.
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