The Ghost in the Trunk
Two hunters stumble upon a gruesome find near the shoreline, sparking a coroner's investigation into an forgotten grave.
On Sunday afternoon while hunting near Hunter's point, about three miles below West Seattle, William Kickert and William Campbell discovered a trunk containing a corpse. They notified Coroner Horton of their ghastly find, and yesterday he made an examination of the trunk and its contents. The coroner came to the conclusion that the remains were those of an aged Indian woman, who had probably died over a year ago. The Indians had put her body in a trunk and selected a hollow in the ground caused by the uprooting of a tree for a grave. The spot was twelve feet from high water mark and about twenty feet back from the edge of the water. The hunters had shot a pigeon and in trying to find the game stumbled across the trunk. They were of the belief that it was the body of a murdered white woman. The remains were left where they were found, being covered over with earth.
“They were of the belief that it was the body of a murdered white woman.”
This discovery highlights the complex colonial history of burial and land use in the Puget Sound region, where Indigenous practices were often viewed with suspicion or morbid fascination by the settler population.
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