White Mob Hangs Innocent Teen at Nooksack Crossing
A white mob dragged Jimmie Boole from his bed at Nooksack Crossing and hanged him from a tree to force a confession for a horse theft he was innocent of, cutting him down before he died.
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.
Last Saturday evening, Jimmie Boole, a half-breed living at Nooksack Crossing, Whatcom county, was called from his bed at 10 p.m. by a ruffianly crowd of white men and hanged on a tree in order to extort a confession from him relative to the stealing of a horse. It transpires that the half-breed was innocent of any knowledge of the horse or who stole it. One of the crowd cut the lad down before he was strangled to death. The ringleader of this outrageous performance is suspected.
“Jimmie Boole... was called from his bed at 10 p.m. by a ruffianly crowd of white men and hanged on a tree in order to extort a confession.”
This 1885 account of a vigilante attempt on a young man's life reflects a dark era of frontier lawlessness that often targeted Indigenous populations in Washington. It serves as a jarring reminder of how community 'justice' was historically weaponized, a stark contrast to modern dialogues on the legacy of racial violence in the Pacific Northwest.
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