The Boys in Blue Arrive in Seattle
When federal troops were deployed to suppress anti-Chinese violence in 1885, they found themselves quartered in a local opera house, leading to a strange and rowdy few days in the city.
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.
In certain circles, it was known early on Saturday that government troops would arrive here during the night. Mayor Yesler had secured the Pacific House, on Main Street, and the Standard Theater, on South Second Street, for the soldiers. Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, there were between two and three hundred citizens on hand to see the soldiers arrive at 2:00 a.m. via the Shore Line road. Ten companies of the Fourteenth Infantry, under command of Lieutenant Colonel De Russy, were offloaded.
Half an hour before leaving Vancouver, the soldiers had been paid off, receiving three months' pay. Once released, the regulars spent their time knocking about the streets, having a jolly good time spending their money. A number got drunk, and in a few instances committed assaults upon unoffending Chinese citizens. By Sunday evening, General Gibbon ordered that all soldiers report to headquarters at the Pacific House, and those who had acted badly were placed in the guardhouse for fatigue duty.
One young soldier on picket duty, who had enlisted in the army after losing his savings in a gambling house in St. Louis, reflected on his situation: 'In nine cases out of ten, when you find an American boy enlisting in time of peace, you can put it down that he has been in some trouble or disgraced himself, and joins the army to hide from the world.' Another soldier, formerly in the employ of A. W. Piper in this city, noted the irony of his new role: 'I am here to protect the Chinese, whom my former employer is trying to drive out.'
“In nine cases out of ten, when you find an American boy enlisting in time of peace, you can put it down that he has been in some trouble or disgraced himself.”
The 1885 anti-Chinese riots in Seattle represent a dark chapter in the city's labor and ethnic history, often forgotten in the shadow of the Great Seattle Fire. The tension between local laborers, foreign-born soldiers, and marginalized communities mirrors the complex, often volatile dynamics of Seattle's rapid demographic and economic shifts throughout its history.
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