Nine Good Men Never Came Home From the Seal Grounds
A hurricane off Cape Flattery swallows three canoes full of the strongest seal hunters of the tribe, all in the perilous work of gathering furs.
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.
A New Dungeness Indian who arrived on Sunday last from Neah Bay gives us the particulars. Some ten days previous six canoes had started out for seals. Each canoe had three Indians in her — powerful, powerful fellows, who feared no danger, and who had for many seasons been out on seal-hunting expeditions. They went out to sea some miles from land and were quite successful. But a southeast wind commenced to blow and soon increased to a hurricane. All the canoes put out then for the nearest island shore. Three canoes and the men were lost with the Indians they contained. Thus nine of the strongest and best men of the tribe have lost their lives in their attempts to procure furs with which to decorate and clothe mankind.
“Thus nine of the strongest and best men of the tribe have lost their lives in their attempts to procure furs with which to decorate and clothe mankind.”
Seal hunting was a cornerstone of Makah and coast Salish life at Neah Bay, and open-water work was always deadly. Nine able men gone in a single storm could gut a village's ability to provision itself for a winter. Today the Makah still fight for their treaty right to hunt at sea — the same water, the same risk, a very different legal battlefield.
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