An Old Warrior Arrested in North Yakima
A remnant of the 1877 Nez Perce conflict is taken into custody following a dispute over his wife.
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.
In the arrest of Otski, an Indian of the Colville reservation, by United States Marshal Short, a leaf of the troublesome days of '77 is turned to the light once more. In Otski is found a remnant of the famous band of Nez Perces that successfully stood off General Miles and his soldiers. Otski came to North Yakima from Colville two weeks ago to pick hops and look for his wife, who left him more than a year ago to make her home with another Indian. He found his wife and on two or three occasions attempted to kill her. On Sunday he got drunk and went to the tepee of the man who stole her love, and notified the pair that he was on the warpath again and was out for blood. Superintendent Jay Lynch of the Yakima reservation ordered the marshal to place Otski under arrest and hold him until the agent at Colville could come after his ward. Otski was a member of Chief Moses' band and was with that warrior in the war of 1877; when the band was captured, he escaped and joined the Sioux. During a drunken row one day he killed a Umatilla chief.
“A leaf of the troublesome days of '77 is turned to the light once more.”
This article highlights the lingering trauma and social displacement of Indigenous people following the wars of the 1870s, as seen through the sensationalist lens of the early 20th-century press.
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