A Town Organizes a Vigilance Committee to Keep 'Northern Indians' Off Its Shore
Citizens meet at the Court House, resolve that 'no Northern Indians at any time be allowed to land at this place,' and appoint a standing Committee of Vigilance to enforce it.
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.
Pursuant to a call, a meeting of the citizens was held at the Court House, May 21, 1859, for the purpose of devising the best means of preventing the tribes of Northern Indians (from Victoria) from landing at this place. Col. E. S. Dyer was elected to the chair and W. W. Armstrong chosen secretary.
The chairman stated the object of the meeting.
On motion of W. W. Armstrong, a committee of four was appointed to report the best means to pursue to carry out the object of the meeting, who reported the following resolutions, which were adopted:
Resolved, That the employment of Northern Indians is a violation of the law, and we pledge ourselves to prevent all who may violate it.
Resolved, That we request the citizens of Puget Sound to aid in driving from our Territory the Northern Indians.
Resolved, That we will not employ Northern Indians, either male or female, in our employ, and that we will discountenance all who do.
Resolved, That no Northern Indians at any time be allowed to land at this place; that they be ordered off; and that they be notified that if they do not obey, they will be removed by force.
Resolved, That a committee of three be appointed, which shall be called the Vigilance Committee, whose duty it shall be to have the general superintendence of the means and measures to be used, and to carry out the foregoing resolutions, and for the best means of keeping the Northern Indians from coming into our midst; and it shall be at liberty, whenever it deems it necessary, to call the citizens together for the purpose of carrying out every measure.
The following were appointed the Committee of Vigilance: [names partly illegible].
E. S. DYER, Chairman. W. W. ARMSTRONG, Sec'y.
“Resolved, That no Northern Indians at any time be allowed to land at this place.”
This is not a curiosity: it is the paper trail of a self-appointed citizens' committee pledging to drive Native people out of Puget Sound by force, months before the better-remembered anti-Chinese expulsions of the 1880s. The same logic — a community vote deciding who may land, work and stay — recurs in every era of Washington's exclusion fights. The Coast Salish and Native families these resolutions targeted were the original inhabitants of the ground the Court House stood on.
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