This day in history: 8 of 59 canine escapees avoid returning to pound. Teepees pitched amid tribal gathering near downtown

From 1976: About 59 inmates broke out of city custody and ran free downtown, but officers managed to get all but eight escapees back into their cells.

Barking was involved – a lot of barking.

The escapees were dogs that someone let loose from Spokane’s City Dog Pound. An unknown person broke into the pound, opened the dog’s cages and then opened a door to the outside.

“There were yapping dogs everywhere when we got there,” Officer Roger D. Bragdon said. “We managed to round up about 20 and got them back in their cages.”

Pound workers arrived and were able to get another 30 back into custody, but eight were still at large the next day.

Bragdon, by the way, would become Spokane’s police chief in 1999.

From 1926: Native women pitched tepees near downtown Spokane as tribal members gathered for the second annual Northwest Indian Congress.

“Now and then the workers would boost an Indian lad up one of the tepee poles as far as she could, and then the youngster would squirm the rest of the way to the top of the lodge and fasten the canvas together,” wrote Spokane Chronicle reporter Paul G. Wapato, whose byline read “Full Blood Indian, Member of the Chronicle Editorial Staff.”

“The Indians encamped at the stadium this morning were a happy lot, bantering and chattering in their guttural tongues and poking fun at the curious white children who were present,” wrote Wapato.

The congress was scheduled to get underway later in the week.