The Search for Zinham's Cattle
A classic Pacific Northwest plea for missing livestock offers a window into the daily rhythm of 1877 Seattle.
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.
STRAYED—From the premises, about four weeks since, two cows. One red cow, about four years old; the other, red and white, three years old. The red cow and one of the spotted ones have the tip of the left ear cut off straight, and the other one has the right ear cropped. A suitable reward will be paid for their return, or for information as to their whereabouts. W. H. Zinham, at Miller’s Saloon, Seattle, W.T., January 1877.
“A suitable reward will be paid for their return, or for information as to their whereabouts.”
While Seattle’s modern landscape of steel and glass has long since paved over the pastures of the 1870s, the anxiety of a small business owner searching for lost property remains a timeless, universal struggle in the city's commercial life. Then, it was cattle roaming the frontier; today, it is the modern merchant or resident grappling with the unpredictability of a rapidly changing, often exclusionary, urban economy.
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