1885, Seattle area: The Perry Bayne trial
Perry Bayne is charged with murder in the massively multicultural King County area…
An anti-Chinese riot (image credit: History Net)
This is no Seattle grunge music story or drug feud. It happened in the late frontier period in Washington Territory.
The dead in this unprovoked racially motivated attack, sadly common at that historical moment, are 3 Chinese immigrant men at “China Camp”: Fang Woey, Yen Sung, and Mon Goat.
Chinook Jargon is much involved in the proceedings.
One witness testifying is Jim Youdepump, a Lushootseed-sounding name, from the Squak Valley.
Apparently speaking mostly in Chinuk Wawa — much of his testimony can be back-translated into it if we try — Youdepump tells the court of hearing a couple of White guys, Samuel Robertson (I hope no relation to me) and Perry Bayne, conversing:
They were talking in English. Did not understand what Perry said. Sam talked in Chinook.
By the way, that terse phrasing doesn’t necessarily reflect a rough translation from Chinook Jargon. Newspapers of that era often published their court reporters’ notebooks largely unchanged.
• • •
In totally fascinating comment on the swearing-in oath in Jargon, Jim Youdepump gets emotional:
At this juncture the witness got quite warmed up, and said, in Chinook: “When I came on this stand I took an oath to tell the truth. God heard me swear to tell the truth, and I am not going to say anything that is not the truth and that I did not see.”
The Judge stopped the witness and told him to confine his conversation to answering questions put to him by the lawyers.
From Sam Robertson’s testimony:
I know Indian Curley, and Johnny. Did not see either of them at the store. I was at the store an hour. I went from there with the boys, Perry Bayne, Rumsey, Joe Day and Dan Hughes. We went to Jim Graham’s tent. I being the only one who understood Chinook well, Mr. Bayne and Mr. Rumsey told me to ask Jim to go with us, which he did. He did not want to go; we coaxed him. Mr. Bayne told him to put on his shoes and come along. He said he would. From there we went to Tyee Jim’s and asked him to go along.
— from the Seattle (WA) Post-Intelligencer of October 29, 1885, page 1, columns 1-3
