Reports of Renegade Indians Near Yakima
Alarm spreads as reports reach Olympia of a breakout from the Yakima Indian Reservation.
Bruce Milroy, who has just arrived from east of the mountains, is authority for the statement that 150 Piute Indians have escaped from the Yakima Indian Reservation, where they were sent in 1878, after their outbreak against the whites in Utah. A Umatilla chief came into the reservation a day or two after their escape, and reported that they had attacked and massacred two trains of immigrants. The soldiers were at once sent after the renegade Indians. This is the band of Indians to which the famous Sarah Winnemucca belonged.
“A Umatilla chief came into the reservation a day or two after their escape, and reported that they had attacked and massacred two trains of immigrants.”
This report reflects the era's heightened tensions and the often sensationalized, unreliable 'frontier' journalism that shaped settler perceptions of Indigenous people during the late 19th century.
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