A court action against oil trains by the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community echoes concerns raised in this telegram from 1889.
In 1889, the acting commissioner of Indian Affairs heard about a new railroad construction project that was under way, laying track on Swinomish land about 70 miles north of the city, without permission. He fired off a telegram to a federal employee in Seattle, but it was too late. A subsequent telegram from the federal agent shows that the railway company had already built 1,130 yards. The telegram couldn’t halt the railway’s construction, but it was stored away by the tribe until a tribal historian dug it up decades later. And now its concerns are being renewed in a legal fight that could slow crude-oil trains through Seattle.
