- Dungeness Massacre occurs on September 21, 1868. (historylink.org)
Just before dawn on September 21, 1868, 26 S’Klallam Indians, led by a man known locally as Lame Jack (or Nu-mah the Bad by his tribesmen), conduct a raid on a party of 18 Tsimshian Indians camped on New Dungeness Spit. The Tsimshians were traveling by dugout canoe to Fort Simpson near Prince Rupert, British Columbia, from Puyallup where they had been harvesting hops. They had decided to wait for daylight and for a dense fog to lift before making the 22-mile journey north across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Vancouver Island. Within a short period of time, the S’Klallam massacre 17 Tsimshian Indians, but one woman, wounded and left for dead, escapes to tell the story. It is the last major bloodletting among Indians in this area.