A Hostage Standoff on the First Road
A historical account of the 1858 construction of Whatcom County’s first road, involving an armed confrontation with Indigenous locals.
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 1858, Judge M. T. Tawes and an assistant blazed the first road ever built in Whatcom County, running from Whatcom to the upper Nooksack River crossing. Upon reaching the river, Tawes encountered Indigenous people who, fearing the road signaled a total dispossession of their lands, attempted to intercept the party. In a tense standoff, Tawes held the local chief at gunpoint, vowing to kill him if his men did not retreat. Tawes maintained this hostage situation overnight and throughout the following day, keeping his pistol trained on the chief until he could safely navigate back down the river via canoe. The incident, recorded by the Whatcom Reveille, serves as a grim reflection of the era's violent expansion.
“They had decided to nip the movement in the bud by killing Mr. Tawes and his companions... he quietly informed them that the first move they made to carry out their murderous desires he should blow out the chief's brains.”
This narrative serves as a stark reminder of the settler-colonial process in Washington State, where the construction of infrastructure was frequently a direct act of dispossession. The account is framed through the settler's lens of 'pioneer bravery,' but it reveals the profound resistance Indigenous communities mounted against the encroachment on their territory.
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