A Five-Year-Old Boy Killed on the Railroad Bridge — Weeks After His Father Died the Same Way
Little Napoleon Whatcom was playing on the Puyallup reservation bridge when an eastbound train struck him; his father had been killed by a freight train only weeks before.
Tacoma, June 24. — Special. — Napoleon Whatcom, jr., a 5-year-old Indian boy, was killed Saturday forenoon on the railroad bridge near the Puyallup reservation. He was playing on the bridge with several other Indian children. They saw a train coming from the east. All but Napoleon left the roadbed. Napoleon stood on the track of the east-bound train and before the engineer saw him the locomotive hurled the little fellow to one side, breaking his skull. The funeral took place yesterday. His father, Napoleon Whatcom, sr., was killed in Puyallup only a few weeks ago by a freight train.
“His father, Napoleon Whatcom, sr., was killed in Puyallup only a few weeks ago by a freight train.”
Two generations of one Puyallup-area family killed by trains within weeks of each other — a stark illustration of how railroad lines cut through and endangered Native communities on and around reservations. The brief, matter-of-fact notice is itself telling: a child's death recorded in a few lines, with no inquiry into why children were playing on an unguarded bridge.
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