A Kenton Picnic Speech and the Justification of Native Displacement
At a Kenton picnic, Judge Orange Jacobs cast pioneer survival as historical necessity and used dehumanizing rhetoric to defend the displacement of Native Americans.
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.
Judge Orange Jacobs, being introduced said that his address, prepared with a few days' notice, consisted of old and new material, and that it was on the character of the pioneer. There is in the character of the pioneer much to excite our admiration and much to challenge the considerate and kindly judgment of after years.
Character is what a person really is—reputation is what he seems to be to others... Character consists, first, of those forces, inclinations, tendencies, bent and impulses which come along down the line of hereditary descent; and secondly, of the moulding and directing forces which spring out of the external environment of the person.
It must be remembered that from the same wild valley or dark woods, in which ascended the smoke from the humble cabin of the pioneer, there also ascended the smoke from the fire and the council fire of the savage. Much has been written of the character of the savage people. But that character can be truthfully epitomised in one sentence: he had no virtue but bravery; he recognised no vice but cowardice.
The Indian never chose an open fight. Ambush was his rule... He was ever ready to start up, like a felon wolf, at midnight in a war of extermination. When he was apparently the most friendly, and his seeming friendship the most demonstrative, there was the greatest danger.
Such were the surroundings of the pioneer. He was in constant danger from savage heads and savage men. A character developed under the influence of such surroundings must have for its chief attributes watchfulness, daring, fortitude, bravery and a constantly determined resolve to maintain identity and virtue... To prevent any misuse he had to be frequently on the alert, his life ready, his ammunition at hand.
When danger came he acted in the proper spirit. He was the hero—the defender of the home and the family. No, say he was cruel; we say he was but obeying the law of self-preservation... His endurance and fortitude never wondered. Honours, comforts, luxuries had a terror for him.
Superadded to this pure reign of religion in the character of the pioneer, I am free to admit that there was in many of them...
This 1898 speech by Judge Orange Jacobs is a stark example of how Seattle's elite constructed their civic identity. By framing Native Americans as inherent 'savages' and pioneers as heroic defenders, they justified the violent dispossession of Indigenous lands—a narrative that underpinned the city's rapid growth and remains a critical part of understanding Seattle's colonial history.
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