The Lost Schooner's Dark Secret

Most of our readers on the Sound will recollect that some eighteen months since, the little schooner 'Ellen Maria', Capt. Duncan Chase, and the schooner 'Blue Wing', Capt. Rodney Stevens, were lost on their passage down the Sound and never heard of again. Mr. Henry Schroter, of Steilacoom, was at the time on his way home to attend the February term of court in 1859. No trace or clue was ever discovered of either vessel, and the whole matter has remained a profound mystery. Recently, however, circumstances give strong indication that both vessels were attacked by Indians—the persons on board murdered, and the vessels burned. We have been informed that at a recent examination before Judge Pemberton, in Victoria, an Indian witness stated that he was in a northern canoe with a large party of Northern Indians, and that a short distance below Seattle, very early one morning, they overtook a schooner bound down, with one man on deck. The Indians shot him, then boarded the vessel and killed two others who were below; and after taking what they wanted, they set the vessel on fire and burned her to the water's edge. On the afternoon of the same day, they attacked another schooner, supposed to be the 'Ellen Maria', on the western side of the Sound near Bainbridge Island, murdered the persons on board, and burned her.