The Conflict at Jarmon Prairie
A violent confrontation between loggers and local Indigenous people in Skagit County ends in bloodshed and conflicting accounts.
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.
News arrived in Mount Vernon this evening of a probable murder which occurred at 2 o'clock this morning, about eight miles north. Three Indians attacked two white men, and one is now dying from the effects of stabs and the other is seriously wounded. Hank Downey and George Frazier are loggers employed by Fred Malsberger on the Samish River. They claim they came across three Indians who asked for whiskey. The white men refused to get them any, and the Indians suddenly jumped on them, stabbing Downey twice in the abdomen and once near the heart, and cutting Frazier's back. The official theory, however, discredits the men's story, suggesting they visited the Indian camp while the residents were away and were attacked when they returned and found the loggers in their homes.
“The theory is that the men made a visit to the Indian camp during the absence of the Indians, and when they came home and found the white men in their homes the Indians set upon them.”
This report captures the typical racial framing and settler-colonial tensions of the 1890s. The struggle over land and the framing of conflict highlights how early newspapers marginalized Indigenous perspectives during a period of rapid dispossession.
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