The Beast on the Bluff: Hunting a Panther in White River
A Seattle neighborhood turns out with dogs to track a predator that decimated a local farmer's livestock.
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.
On Friday night last, four sheep were killed by a wild animal in the neighborhood of Peter Saar, Esq., on White river, and suspecting it to be a cougar, a party of four men started out the next morning with dogs in search of it. After following in the wake of the dogs until about noon, they surrounded the animal in the brush, on the bluff a short distance back of Mr. Saar’s place, and soon dispatched it with their rifles. It proved to be a panther of an unusually large size.
“After following in the wake of the dogs until about noon, they surrounded the animal in the brush, on the bluff a short distance back of Mr. Saar’s place, and soon dispatched it with their rifles.”
While wildlife encounters in the suburbs of the Seattle metro area today usually involve coyotes or black bears, the 1876 account of a 'panther'—a mountain lion—in what was then the rural White River valley serves as a stark reminder of the dense, untamed wilderness that once defined the region. The swift organization of a local hunting party highlights a time when community safety and the protection of livestock were handled as immediate, hands-on civic duties.
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