PESHNEKAI.

Herbert Hunt, "Peshnekai's bones," History of Tacoma. p. 78-79.

The Indians quite often were whipped or beaten for their offenses. One day an Indian stole a pair of pants from McCaw & Rogers' store. McCaw captured him and clipped off his long hair, then kicked him the whole length of the store. But this was a matter which did not seem to arouse Indian resentment.

Mrs. Howard Carr, who before her marriage was Jane Bradley, daughter of an early settler, tells how when they were living above Sumner in 1861, her father's saw was stolen, and he suspected Peshnekai, a Klickitat. He ordered him to return it within two days, which was done, but it again was stolen. It was returned on demand and when it was stolen the third time Bradley decided to whip the Indian. He procured the assistance of a neighbor, Mr. Lemmon, to carry out the chastisement. 

When the Indian came in with the saw Bradley tied him to a post and gave him several lashes, while Lemmon stood guard with a gun. Then Lemmon whipped him while Bradley held the gun. Three Indians who had come with Peshnekai stood by and saw the knot applied. All of them, however, often visited the Bradleys after that and none of them was more friendly than Peshnekai himself.

Peshnekai afterward fell beneath the spell of a missionary, possibly Father Weston, who also was a blacksmith, and he hammered his pulpit with no less muscular energy than he hammered his anvil. The Indian became very religious and when he fell ill he begged his white friends to let him lie in a white man's graveyard. His wish was fulfilled. He was placed in a little cemetery on the Woolery place. 

Some time afterward John Welch was employed to survey and fence the cemetery. His lines led him to the necessity either of building a fence directly across Peshnekai's grave or of moving the Indian's bones. He built the fence. Some of his acquaintances told him he surely would be pestered by Peshnekai's ghost. 

One evening Welch, who was a bachelor and was living with the Gillam family, had spent the evening with friends and was on his way home. He had just passed the graveyard when he heard a noise as of a mysterious something following him. He struck viciously behind and his cane seemed to fall upon a bag of bones. He seemed to hear the noise in front of him; he threshed about with his cane, each blow seeming to strike a skeleton.

He ran, all the while fighting with his cane. He reached the Gillam house exhausted and fell on the porch breathless. Gillam went to the gate to reconnoiter. He found there Welch's cane and on the end of it still was fastened the remnants of a rattling pasteboard box.