The Captain's Feud on the Neah Bay Frontier
A seafarer and trade negotiator publicly spars with a rival over the treatment of Indigenous laborers and local business ethics.
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.
I have been told about your article for word for word, and I do not want you or any man to get in trouble about me. I heard from good authority that they were both mad at the writing of it. I wrote to Gov. Newell, and if they have a mind to, they will have a chance to challenge my statements. Woods is very forgetful. I wonder if he remembers asking me to go into the sealing business with that questionable crew. He also says that I knew that the Indians trade away from home, and must pay me the compliment that I knew better. Now you see he is willing to pay me one compliment, don't forget it. About the Indians being paid the same price as at Victoria, it is not so. I will leave here in two days for Neah Bay. I am going at my own business. They will not let me seal, and I will keep you posted on things in general.
“I have been told about your article for word for word, and I do not want you or any man to get in trouble about me.”
This letter, penned in 1885, captures the high-stakes, cutthroat nature of maritime trade and labor relations on the Olympic Peninsula. The rhetoric of 'monopolies' and the exploitation of reservation labor—juxtaposed with the writer's defensive posture—mirrors the ongoing tensions between independent operators and established corporate interests in Washington's evolving maritime economy.
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