The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1899-04-06
INDIANS WERE GUILTY.
Party of Kentucky Gold Seekers Muir
dered in Alaska.

Washington, April 6.-Through
roundabout way the interior depart
ment has secured more details of the
massacre by Alaskan Indians of a
band of shipwrecked Klondikers last
June, who were at first supposed to
have been drowned. An investi-
cation is under way with the
view to apprehending and Furnishing
the offenders, some sixty or seventy
in number.
Reuben c. Marsten, a hunter and
trapper of Nunivak Island, Alas
ka, first learned of the crime. He is
married to an Indian woman, MEMBER
of the tribe who murdered the whites,
and she, while visiting her tribe, heard
some of the Indians talking about the
massacre and told her husband, who
reported the facts to the owners of the
wrecked vessel
He got word to the owners from his
home at Nunivak Island, through the
captain of a schooner, who called at
that point, and the owners, Messrs.
Barnesson and Chilkott of Port Towns
end, communicated the information to
the relatives of the murdered men in
Kentucky.
A party of fourteen young men of
Kentucky and Tennessee left last spring
to seek gold in Alaska, and had map
ped out plan by which they were to
prospect upon some of the uneXplored
creeks and rivers.
The party was led by DIR. R. NJ. Allen
of Louisville, KY; John T. Murphy of
Frankfort KY, and Mr.. Smallhouse of
Bowling Green, KY. Another of the
party was brother of Mr.. William M.
F'rierSon, a lawyer of Chattanooga,
Tenn. The remainder was made up of
four young men from Kentucky, three
from Tennessee, and the others from
adjoining states.
They started from San Francisco on
the steamer Jessie, small boat which
they had fitted out, and in June We're
wrecked a the mouth of the Kuskowin
river, a large stream which empt1eS into
Boring sea. No word was heard of the
party for months, and finally it was
learned that the vessel had been wreck
ed and all were given up as lost.
When the wife of Trapper Marsten
went to visit her relatives on the Kus-
kowin river they were celebrating the
event with a drunk.
A violent quarrel arose among the
jewellers about the division of the spOilS,
during which the story of the crime
was told.
During the storm the tribe of Indians
were few miles from the mouth of the
river drying salmon and saw the Jessie
go upon the rocks and the men strug-
Cling in the wreck, endeavoring to
reach shore. The Indians helped them
to get ashore after watching their
struggles for awhile, and made peaceful
oVertures to the strangers.
About midnight, when all the white
strangers were sleeping soundly, the
men of the tribe, about seventy in num-
ber stole down to the camp and muir
dered them.
The bodies were robbed of all valu-
ableS and the scant store that had been
saved from the wreck appropriated by
the band of nurderers, who then mutt
lated the bodies of their victims beyond
recognition and carried them a long
distance out to sea
Representative Evans of Kentucky
and Richardson and Moon of Tennessee
have urged the department to make a
thorough investigation, and Governor
Brady of Alaska has been so instructed.
The attorney generals office has also
been asked to have the United States
marshals in Alaska aid in these inVesti-
cations. There are so few officers of
the Department in the Territory that it
has s,een hard to administer justice,
but in this instance a special effort will
be made to punish the offending In
dams.
The gunboat Wheeling will reach
Alaska in June, when the ice opens,
and at the suggestion of Governor
Brady it will take prominent part in
the investigations, and with the United
States marshals from the nearest point
may invade the Indians territory