A Medicine Man Buried on the Green River, Kin to the Chief They Hanged
James Bootsoish was killed by a father whose children he could not cure. A hundred mourners, a Catholic burial on the riverbank — and a family name that reaches back to Leschi and the war of 1855.
Tacoma, March 15. — A big Indian funeral was held today over James Bootsoish, the medicine man who was murdered ten days ago by a man the paper calls Indian Jerry, for failing to cure the latter's children. A hundred Indians were present.
The dead man was a faithful Catholic and prayers were said for his soul before his body was laid away on the banks of the Green river. He was a nephew of Leschi, the famous chieftain who led the allied forces during the Indian wars of forty years ago.
“The dead man was a faithful Catholic and prayers were said for his soul before his body was laid away on the banks of the Green river. He was a nephew of Leschi, the famous chieftain who led the allied forces during the Indian wars of forty years ago.”
Leschi was hanged in 1858 for his part in the war over the Medicine Creek treaty lands; the Washington State Senate formally declared him wrongly convicted only in 2004. His nephew's death in 1895 — killed over a failed cure, mourned by a hundred people on the Green River — is a record of the Native community that did not disappear when the treaties were signed. The river where he was buried now runs through Kent and Auburn, under the same name.
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