The Tragic Death at the Quinault Tent
A coroner's inquest explores the death of a young prospector after his partner admits to a fatal shooting.
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.
Frank O'Donald, B. F. Loomis, and S. C. Gillman, the witnesses in the inquest case held by Coroner Gile, arrived down Monday. Frank O'Donald, who was the first person to see young Kinkel after he was shot and who stayed with him until he died, told the story: 'I live about a mile and a-half below where Turner and Kinkel had taken up their claims and pitched a tent. Sunday, about an hour before daylight, I was awakened by someone hollering. Found Turner with a rag burning in a skillet of grease. He said, "O'Donald, I have shot Kinkel." I asked, "What did you do it for?" "My God!" he said, "it was an accident." Kinkel told me he had gotten up to make the fire, and was putting the embers together, when he was shot. Throughout it all Turner was overcome with grief, and cried bitterly. He was crying when I found him outside my cabin. I do not believe it was anything but an accident.' The coroner's jury returned a verdict of accidental shooting.
“My God! it was an accident.”
This account captures the raw, dangerous reality of life on the Olympic Peninsula frontier in 1891. Such disputes were common in isolated timber camps, where the line between a tragic accident and a crime was often blurred by the lack of law enforcement and the intense pressures of wilderness survival.
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