U. S. citizen militia kills Nisqually women and children during Indian wars in April 1856.

HistoryLink.org Essay 5209 : Printer-Friendly Format

In April 1856, during the Indian wars, Captain Hamilton J. C. Maxon and his citizen militia come upon a Nisqually encampment near where the Ohop Creek and the Mashel River join with the Nisqually River. (This is near the Thurston County-Pierce County border at the southernmost end of Puget Sound.) Several families, mostly women and children are encamped here. Captain Maxon and his volunteers kill everyone in this camp and then find a larger encampment near the confluence of the two rivers, again with mostly women and children present. The troops kill 17 of these Nisqually noncombatants and wound many more.

This event became known as Maxon's massacre (sometimes the Mashel massacre).

Sources:
Charles Wilkinson, Messages from Frank's Landing: A Story of Salmon, Treaties, and the Indian Way (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 16-17; Caroline Denyer Gallacci, The City of Destiny and the South Sound: An Illustrated History of Tacoma and Pierce County (Carlsbad, CA: Heritage Media Corp., 2001).

By Priscilla Long, February 15, 2003

Travel through time (chronological order):
< Browse to Previous Essay | Browse to Next Essay >

Related Topics: American Indians | Northwest Indians | Pioneers | War & Peace | Calamities |

Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.