The Strange Order from the North
A local merchant is tasked with sourcing a custom gravestone for an Alaska Native man who is very much alive.
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.
Some orders received by our city merchants are extremely laughable. One jobbing house recently received a letter from Alaska from a regular customer ordering a tombstone for a living Indian. The man wanted a stone four feet high with the figure of the moon on top, and a pair of hands clasped below. He requested that a face be cut into the moon to resemble the 'man in the moon,' and the name 'Kohikeat' inscribed. Since the man is living, the sender noted, 'I do not know when he will die or when he was born. I think we will put no dates on the stone.' If the man refuses to accept it, the stone can easily be re-lettered for another.
“As the man is still living and I do not know when he will die or when he was born, I think we will put no dates on the stone.”
This story highlights the era's detached, colonial curiosity regarding Indigenous customs and lives. It serves as a reminder of how businesses in Seattle acted as the primary supply depot for the resource extraction frontier in Alaska, often viewing local cultures as eccentric commodities.
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