When Little Raven’s raiding party found the encampment surrounding the mill, it was already in a state of agitation, with arguments erupting between families over a variety of issues and old grudges as well as a few new ones, including the presence of the mill that many argued would soon attract more white settlers.
That was fine for some, who anticipated the advantages of trade. But others argued that their freedom would be taken from them, as had happened to those living in the eastern part of the sound and in Vancouver. The whites were experts at that, they knew.
The arguments were loud and hot.
Little Raven, despite an infirmity that year from a stroke that had left him with a clumsy left arm, still had his keen sense of strategy and immediately perceived opportunity in the making. Although the Northerners were likely not known by these Salish, he ordered the Haida and Skidegate in the long boats to remove their face paint, don clothing stolen from various raids against the settlers, and leave their long boats hidden in an attempt to conceal their identities as they moved through the Salish encampment.
They settled into a secluded area on the long beach near a stream, to rest and quietly observe.
Because so many clans and tribes were present, tribal languages and dialects spoken in the area were diverse, and, thus, many resorted to the Chinook trade jargon to communicate with one another. Observing this as an advantage, Little Raven, adorned with telltale double labrets on his lower lip and prominently tattooed, kept himself covered. He forbade his warriors to speak in their native Makan and had the least conspicuous of his Haida warriors be the spokesperson, conversing exclusively in Chinook when any interaction was necessary.
Thus, the Northerners’ presence in the camp went unnoticed for several days. On the fifth day, however, a Makah woman, slaved to a Salish tyee, passed on the outskirts of the Northerners’ encampment to retrieve fresh water. There she encountered a young Haida man bathing in the stream.
At first, she was aroused by the warrior’s well-proportioned, naked physique and, while observing from a thicket upstream, found herself flushing and faint. But after a few minutes, the young warrior turned to the front, and she recognized the significance of his tattoos. As a little girl, she had witnessed a terrifying raid by Haida against her Tatoosh clan.
He was a killer.
Each one of his tattoos told a story, and the way he bathed himself, watching with narcissistic pride as the water fell over his young, muscular body, instantly reminded her of a vicious experience imposed by similar arrogant men, likely from his clan, who had left her family decimated and enslaved.
She hurried back to her own encampment and passed this information to the tyee of her small group, TsasiTa Na, also known as “Trader Johnny.”
Johnny, well known to white settlers in the area, was a shrewd and enterprising man and, always looking for profit, decided to keep news of the Northerners from the other Salish. Instead, he sold it to the mill foreman.
When the already frightened foreman heard the news, without waiting for full details, he immediately sent off a native messenger with a hastily scribbled letter to Port Townsend, where it so happened the steamer gunboat U.S. Massachusetts was docked, provisioning itself for a redeployment the next week to San Francisco.
Arriving two days later, the message was misinterpreted by the commandant of the naval ship, who ordered an immediate departure to rescue the mill from what he perceived as an imminent attack by “several hundred Northerner Indians.”
By the time the Massachusetts arrived the next day, the native encampment was in turmoil over other issues. That morning, several shots had been fired in anger by Salish men who had squabbled during a bone-dice throw, and two men were wounded.
The mill workers, hovering nervously in their houses, heard angry shouts and yelling. Thoroughly terrified now, the mill foreman ordered all the employees to crowd themselves into a block house he had constructed for defensive purposes.
When the Massachusetts finally steamed into the Port Gamble bay at three o’clock in the afternoon, the foreman signaled from the block house that the camp was now under siege and had been fired upon.
The captain of the gunboat decided that the best way to break up the attack was to fire warning shots into the encampment woods nearby. Two fell short, killing several men, women, and children.
The Salish natives fled in several directions, but Little Raven’s Haida, seeing their opportunity evaporate, gathered their equipment and ran up the beach to where they had hidden their canoes, hastily pushing themselves into the high, late afternoon surf.
Because theirs was the only activity on the northernmost beach, it was easily observed from the Massachusetts. The commandant of the steamer, Captain Henry S. Melton, finally seeing an opportunity to destroy Northerner long boats within firing range, turned his starboard guns on the two canoes.
He ordered canister and grapeshot rather than shells, anticipating that the scattered discharge would provide better hits than shells from the eighteen-pounders.
Both of the fleeing cedar long boats were riddled badly in the cannonade but moved out of range of the Massachusetts, which by then had turned its attention back to the Indians on shore.
When the mess was complete, thirty-eight Salish and Chimakum on shore had been killed or wounded by the fusillades.
In the canoes, Little Raven was wounded in his back and belly by canister shrapnel and suffered a slow, agonizing trip back north. By the time they reached the Campbell River, he was dead, along with six other Skidegate and Haida.
And on the day of the Port Gamble massacre, Anah dreamed of his sisters again. This time they were blowing into the
