The Sea Gives Up the Dead at Sequim Bay
Storms and high tides tear open an old Native burying ground near Sequim Bay, exposing skeletons — and, reportedly, drawing grave-robbers to the loot buried with the dead.
Port Townsend, April 11.—Special. It is reported here that recent southeasterly storms and high tides washed away a considerable portion of an old burying ground near Sequim bay, used by the Indians in early days. The cemetery is located on a low sandy beach two miles north of Port Williams. It was the custom of the natives to bury the dead under a few inches of earth, and the shifting sands heretofore have frequently exposed numerous grinning skeletons. The cemetery presents the appearance of a battle field where the dead have been abandoned and their bones picked clean by ravenous beasts. It was also the custom to bury the valuables owned by the deceased with the corpse, which never amounted to much on account of the general poverty of the tribes. It is said, however, that Puget sound pirates have frequently landed there and looted the graves, though it is not believed they got much for their troubles.
“The cemetery presents the appearance of a battle field where the dead have been abandoned and their bones picked clean... Puget sound pirates have frequently landed there and looted the graves.”
The desecration of a Native burial ground is reported here as a curiosity, with the dead's poverty and the looters' meager haul offered as the punchline — a telling glimpse of how dispossession was narrated. The tribes of the Sequim and Dungeness country still live on these shores, and the treatment of their ancestors' graves remains a live question of respect and repatriation.
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