A War Party Among the Makah
James G. Swan recounts the violent return of a Makah war party to Neah Bay after a retaliatory expedition against the Elwha people near Dungeness.
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.
I recently saw for the first time a war party of the Cape Flattery Indians go forth on a hostile expedition against a neighboring tribe, and their return with the results of their operations. It was to attack the Elwha Indians near Dungeness, to avenge the murder of 'Swell,' one of the Makah chiefs, who was killed last March. The party started from Neah Bay. There were twelve canoes, containing between 80 or 90 men, all painted black, with their hair tied up in a club knot on the top of their heads, and bound around with fir twigs. On the third day, I was awakened just before sunrise by an unusual noise. The canoes landed on the beach opposite the monument of 'Swell.' A savage held with both hands a bloody head that had been severed from the body of an unfortunate Elwha. The whole party then danced and howled. The heads were stuck on two poles and will remain till time or the crows knock them down. The Elwhas are a band of outlaws—outcasts from the Clallam and Makah tribes—murderers, thieves, and villains, who have committed many a crime with impunity.
“There were no scalp locks dangling to a pole, but real human heads.”
This account by James G. Swan provides a raw, colonial-era perspective on the inter-tribal conflicts and shifting power dynamics in the Puget Sound region during the 19th century. It captures the tension between indigenous systems of justice and the failed promises of the early American Indian agents, a conflict that echoes the complex legacy of treaty-era displacement and legal neglect in Washington State.
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