The 'Wild Man' of the Snoqualmie Valley
For weeks, settlers between Seattle and Snoqualmie reported sightings of a mysterious, hair-covered creature in the woods, only for the enigma to be solved when a starving immigrant was discovered.
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.
For the past month, it has been rumored that a wild man has been roaming about the woods between Seattle and Snoqualmie, Washington. Several times during that period he has been seen by men and children, but he has always managed to disappear at the approach of a human being. Two search parties had gone out in search of the 'wild man of the woods,' but always returned without success. Many people became skeptical about there being any wild man in that area. The whole question was settled on Sunday when a half-starved being, scantily clothed with rags of cloth and furs, was captured near Snoqualmie, about four miles from Seattle. The man is a Norwegian, and has been in this country but one year. He was brought to town and is now in the King County Jail, where he is comfortably clad and furnished with such food as he requires.
“For the past month, it has been rumored that a wild man has been roaming about the woods... but he has always managed to disappear at the approach of a human being.”
This story highlights a common 19th-century habit of pathologizing the isolated immigrant experience as a 'wild' spectacle. Today, it mirrors how the unhoused or those suffering from mental health crises are often dehumanized in headlines as social 'oddities' rather than neighbors in need of assistance.
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