Between two worlds: Chief Seattle links our city to its village roots
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You would mostly see a solid mass of timber. Where now there is Pioneer Square, there would be a village that during the winter was the home to maybe 500 Indians. They lived in longhouses, maybe 100 feet by 50 feet, four or five families in each structure.
There would be another village where now there is Pike Place Market. When the tide was out, you could walk along the shore. But the easiest way to travel was by canoe.
This was the world of Chief Seattle, an Indian nobleman who traveled between various villages.
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We are the largest city in the United States named after a Native American. But many of us don't know much about him, except that we have a statue of him, and his face is on the city's logo.
He was one tough man. He was smart. He was imposing. He could be brutal. He was a stirring speaker, even if his words later were altered. He cut deals to try to help his people survive the takeover of their land. Like many great historical figures, he died a figure of pathos. His death wasn't even mentioned in the Seattle newspapers.
This town exists because of Chief Seattle; and, maybe, in the anecdotes that follow, we can find a bit of what this town is about.
Tonight at 8 KCTS will air a documentary about Chief Seattle. It is a labor of love by B.J. Bullert, a local filmmaker and former communications professor, who scrabbled together $45,000 cash plus various donations of time and equipment.
She grew up in West Seattle and, even when in college on the East Coast, would always return here. One fall she flew back just because she wanted to take photos of Seattle at night with the full moon. You love a place, well, you try to learn its history, too.
What would she tell that twentysomething Seattleite about the man after whom their city is named?
"Chief Seattle remains an elusive, mysterious figure. Seattle faced a historic wager, and none of the options turned out well, certainly not for the Duwamish, his mother's tribe. Chief Seattle is as hard to read as Ally McBeal's boyfriend," Bullert said.
But we can try to piece together some anecdotal nuggets. Some of the information that follows comes from the documentary, a considerable portion is thanks to historian David Buerge and other bits and pieces are from other sources. I should also say that historical accuracy is tough when the sources include somebody's remembrance of what happened decades earlier.
How he became chief
His father was Suquamish; his mother Duwamish. Chief Seattle would have been in his early 20s when he engineered a victorious battle. In our modern times, it's not commonly known that the tribes had slaves. Often, it was women and children that raiding parties took, as they were needed for labor at the tribes' elaborate celebration rituals.
The Puget Sound Indians learned that the Upper Yakimas and Wenatchees were planning a slave raid, coming down the Green River. At a council meeting, Seattle said he knew how to stop the raid. Right at a sharp bend of the river, where Longacres racetrack used to be, he felled a tree from one bank to the other, so it rested six inches above the water.
The raids usually took place at dawn. In the dark, the raiding party in its canoes didn't see the log, and the canoes tipped over. Seattle's warriors annihilated the raiders. Scuba divers have found more than 20 arrowheads right at that spot. It was after this victory that Seattle became chief of the Suquamish and Duwamish.
An imposing, sometimes brutal leader
There were only two photographs taken of Chief Seattle. One is a group picture with other Indians, and you can't see much detail except that he's a tall figure in the middle.
The other photo, the more familiar one, is a portrait taken in 1864, about a year before he died. He's an old man then, in his late 70s, with shoulder-length gray hair. In the original photo, he has his eyes closed, likely because of the flash. Later photos were doctored so his eyes appear open.
This was not the Indian leader who met the first white settlers. Seattle in his younger years was 6 feet tall, muscular with a formidable presence and a strong, powerful voice. At the Indian winter dances, when he shook rattles, the story is that the others listening shook. In a settler's diary, Seattle is described as "a brawny Suquamish with a Roman countenance and black curley hair, the handsomest Indian I have ever seen."
Seattle also scared people, both Indians and whites. He led attacks on several Indian villages, probably because of a blood feud, or revenge. He killed a shaman, a medicine man, probably because he blamed the shaman for the death of a granddaughter. He threatened Hudson's Bay Co. officials with a gun. A white trader once said about Seattle, "I wish they'd kill that brute."
Why Seattle was named after Seattle
When settlers came to what is now Seattle, initially there were probably 13 whites living among 500 Indians. The whites needed the help of Chief Seattle, and he was eager to provide it. Right where Pioneer Square is, Seattle made a speech that was translated to a party of American explorers.
He told them, "We want your blankets, your guns, axes, clothing and tobacco, and all other things you make. We need all these things that you make, as we do not know how to make them, and so we welcome you to our country to make flour, sugar and other things that we can trade for. We wonder why the Boston men should wander so far away from their home and come among so many Indians. Why are you not afraid?"
Chief Seattle got his people to work in fish packing; he showed the whites the good settling areas; he provided labor to bring logs out of the forests.
"He realized pretty early that there were too many Americans, and that they had the technology and big guns. Force wasn't going to solve anything. He tried to create a consensus between the two communities," said historian David Buerge.
When the settlers decided they needed a name for this new town, it seemed natural to name it after the most important person in the village.
How factual is the famous Chief Seattle speech?
Go on the Internet and type in "Chief Seattle Speech." Your screen will be filled with references to it, a text that adorns posters and has been adopted by environmentalists and Native Americans.
Chief Seattle supposedly told whites in 1855, "At night, when the streets of your cities and villages will be silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land.
"The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead - did I say? There is no death. Only a change of worlds."
It's doubtful that Seattle actually said those exact eloquent words, but more likely they were the interpretation of his friend, Dr. Henry Smith, who published the speech more than 30 years after Seattle gave it. Perhaps the best way to think of it is as a legend of the Duwamish people, one that has powerful meaning to them.
A great chief's sad end
By the time Chief Seattle was in his late 50s, he no longer was needed by the whites. They had gotten the lands they wanted. Puget Sound was theirs. In 1865, an ordinance was passed forbidding permanent Indian houses within the city limits, and Chief Seattle was forced to move. He ended up on the Port Madison Indian Reservation in Kitsap County.
He was forced to suffer indignities. Visiting the town named after him, the chief is walking down a sidewalk, and opposite him comes 10-year-old Alice Mercer, of the prominent Mercer family. The chief is surrounded by his Indian attendants. The girl orders the chief off the sidewalk. When he doesn't move, she runs toward him and throws him off the sidewalk into a ditch with sawdust. Chief Seattle isn't angry. His attendants burst out laughing and pull him up.
Chief Seattle died on June 7, 1866. About the only ones attending his funeral are George Meigs, owner of a sawmill at Port Madison, and the people who worked there. None of the big-name white settlers - Maynard, Denny, Yesler - are recorded as having attended the funeral. The death wasn't even reported in the Seattle papers, only showing up years later in a San Francisco paper.
For years afterward, the main reminder to Seattle that it used to have a chief was his daughter, called Princess Angeline by the settlers. She did housework for the whites and lived in a shack near what now is the Pike Place Market. She was photographed by tourists, and was known to throw rocks at the kids who taunted her.
A final word about Chief Seattle
Said David Buerge, who has spent years researching Chief Seattle, "You have to understand that all of a sudden, the world he had known had literally come to an end. For thousands of years, people had happily lived here, and now that entire galaxy had passed away. He tried to make his way in that apocalyptic age. He is the bridge between us and that world."
Now you know a little about the man after whom your city is named. That statue we have of him, it does take on a different meaning, doesn't it?
Contact Erik Lacitis at 206-464-2237 or by e-mail at elacitis@seattletimes.com.