The Snohomish 'War Path'
A rowdy night at the Snohomish riverfront ends in a knife fight between a local drunk and the city marshal.
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.
Last night, two members of the 'Lu' family got full of poor whisky and went on the war path. They attempted to break into a Chinese house, when the attention of our city Marshal, J. K. Vincent, was called to the fact. He arrested one of them; the other mounted his horse and attempted to get away. The marshal followed until he reached him at the side of the water and attempted to take him off his horse, when the man made a rush at him with a knife, cutting through his hat and shirt-front and making a long scratch just over the heart. Just then the horse, man, and gear were floating down the Snohomish river. As it was dark at the time, the marshal could not tell whether he got out or whether he was drowned.
“They attempted to break into a Chinese house, when the attention of our city Marshal, J. K. Vincent, was called to the fact.”
Public intoxication and altercations on the riverfront were a staple of early frontier life in Snohomish. The 'war path' terminology used by the reporter reflects the era's casual adoption of Indigenous imagery to describe local brawls.
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