Chief Seattle

The only known photograph of Chief Seattle, taken ca 1865, when he would have been near the age of 80 years.

Chief Seattle or Sealth (Lushootseed: siʔaɬ; c. 1786 – June 7, 1866), also spelled Seathle, Seathl, or See-ahth, was a leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish Native American tribes in what is now the U.S. state of Washington. A prominent figure among his people, he pursued a path of accommodation to white settlers, forming a personal relationship with David Swinson "Doc" Maynard. Seattle, Washington was named after him.

Biography

Sealth was born around 1786 on or near Blake Island, Washington. His father was a leader of the Suquamish tribe, and his mother was Wood-sho-lit-sa of the Duwamish. In later years, Sealth claimed to have seen the ships of the Vancouver Expedition as they explored Puget Sound.

Sealth earned his reputation at a young age as a leader and a warrior, ambushing and defeating groups of enemy raiders coming up the Green River from the Cascade foothills, and attacking the Chemakum and the S'Klallam, tribes living on the Olympic Peninsula. Like many of his contemporaries, he owned slaves captured during his raids. He was tall and broad for a Puget Sound native at nearly six feet; Hudson's Bay Company traders gave him the nickname Le Gros (The Big One). He was also known as an orator; and when he addressed an audience, his voice is said to have carried from his camp to the Stevens Hotel at First and Marion, a distance of 3/4ths of a mile.

He took wives from the village of Tola'ltu just southeast of Duwamish Head on Elliott Bay (now part of West Seattle). His first wife La-Dalia died after bearing a daughter. He had three sons and four daughters with his second wife, Olahl. The most famous of his children was his first, Kikisoblu or Princess Angeline. Sealth was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church, and given the baptismal name Noah, probably in 1848 near Olympia, Washington. The meaning of this ceremony may be called into question by his references to his people's gods in his most famous speech (below).

For all his skill, Sealth was gradually losing ground to the more powerful Patkanim of the Snohomish when white settlers started showing up in force. When his people were driven from their traditional clamming grounds, Sealth met Maynard in Olympia; they formed a friendly relationship useful to both. Persuading the settlers at Duwamps to rename the town Seattle, Maynard established their support for Sealth's people and negotiated relatively peaceful relations among the tribes.

Sealth kept his people out of the Battle of Seattle (1856). Afterwards, he was unwilling to lead his tribe to the reservation established, since mixing Duwamish and Snohomish was likely to lead to bloodshed. Maynard persuaded the government of the necessity of allowing Sealth to remove to his father's longhouse on Agate Passage, 'Old Man House' or Tsu-suc-cub. Sealth frequented the town named after him, and had his photograph taken by E. M. Sammis in 1865. He died June 7, 1866, on the Suquamish reservation at Port Madison, Washington.

Legacy

Statue (erected 1908) of Chief Seattle, Tilikum Place, Seattle, Washington. The statue is on the National Register of Historic Places.

• Sealth's grave site is at the Suquamish Tribal Cemetery.
• In 1890, a group of Seattle pioneers led by Arthur Armstrong Denny set up a monument over his grave, with the inscription "SEATTLE Chief of the Suqamps and Allied Tribes, Died June 7, 1866. The Firm Friend of the Whites, and for Him the City of Seattle was Named by Its Founders" On the reverse is the inscription "Baptismal name, Noah Sealth, Age probably 80 years." The site was restored and a native sculpture added in 1976.
• The Suquamish Tribe honors Chief Seattle every third week in August at "Chief Seattle Days."
• The city of Seattle, and numerous related features, are named after Sealth.

The Speech Controversy

There is a controversy about a speech by Sealth concerning the concession of native lands to the settlers.

Even the date and location of the speech has been disputed, but the most common version is that on March 11, 1854, Sealth gave a speech at a large outdoor gathering in Seattle. The meeting had been called by Governor Isaac Ingalls Stevens to discuss the surrender or sale of native land to white settlers. Doc Maynard introduced Stevens, who then briefly explained his mission, which was already well understood by all present.

Sealth then rose to speak. He rested his hand upon the head of the much smaller Stevens, and declaimed with great dignity for an extended period. No one alive today knows what he said; he spoke in the Lushootseed language, and someone translated his words into Chinook Indian trade language, and a third person translated that into English.

Some years later, Dr. Henry A. Smith wrote down an English version of the speech, based on Smith's notes. It was a flowery text in which Sealth purportedly thanked the white people for their generosity, demanded that any treaty guarantee access to Native burial grounds, and made a contrast between the God of the white people and that of his own. Smith noted that he had recorded "...but a fragment of his [Sealth's] speech". Recent scholarship questions the authenticity of Smith's supposed translation.

In 1891, Frederick James Grant's History of Seattle, Washington reprinted Smith's version. In 1929, Clarence B. Bagley's History of King County, Washington reprinted Grant's version with some additions. In 1931, John M. Rich reprinted the Bagley version in Chief Seattle's Unanswered Challenge. In the 1960s, articles by William Arrowsmith and the growth of environmentalism revived interest in Sealth's speech. Ted Perry introduced anachronistic material, such as shooting buffalo from trains, into a new version for a movie called "Home", produced for the Southern Baptist Convention's Christian Radio and Television Commission. The movie sunk without a trace, but this newest and most fictional version is the most widely known. Albert Furtwangler analyzes the evolution of Sealth's speech in Answering Chief Seattle (1997).

The speech attributed to Sealth, as re-written by others, has been widely cited as "powerful, bittersweet plea for respect of Native American rights and environmental values", but there is little evidence that he actually spoke it. A similar controversy surrounds a purported 1855 letter from Sealth to President Franklin Pierce, which has never been located and, based on internal evidence, is considered by some historians as "an unhistorical artifact of someone's fertile literary imagination".

See also

File:Chief Seattle gravesite.jpg

Chief Seattle’s gravesite on the Port Madison Indian Reservation in Suquamish, Washington

Closeup of Chief Seattle’s tombstone in Suquamish, Washington

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Buerge, David M. Chief Seattle and Chief Joseph: From Indians to Icons University of Washington Libraries. Retrieved December 17, 2008.
• Chief Seattle Arts. Noah Seattle Retrieved December 17, 2008.
• Furtwangler, Albert, and Seattle. 1997. Answering Chief Seattle. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN 9780295976334 Online version Retrieved December 17, 2008.
• Morgan, Murray. 1982. Skid road: an informal portrait of Seattle. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN 0295958464 and ISBN 9780295958460
• Speidel, William C. 1978. Doc Maynard: the man who invented Seattle. Seattle: Nettle Creek Pub. Co. ISBN 0914890026 and ISBN 9780914890027

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