Spooked in Seattle. Ross Allison
haunting tales of ghosts that roam within the city’s gates. So it doesn’t surprise me that Seattle, the Emerald City, has its fair share of ghosts, just like any other city in the United States.
Okay, so Seattle isn’t riddled with tons of history, due to its late birth in 1851, when the first white party took settlement in what we call Alki Point (or better known as West Seattle) across the Elliot Bay. This was to be called “New York, Alki,” but this land was too exposed to the elements, and so after the first winter, the settlers packed up and tried their luck across the bay at what is now known as Seattle. But its first name was Duwamps, meaning “tide flats” among the natives. Since Seattle got such a late start, there wasn’t much opportunity for too many tragic events to occur as in older cities across the country. However, Seattle was inhabited by others before the white people took over the land. For 10,000 years, the Suquamish and Duwamish tribes walked these lands, fished the waters, and hunted the woods. There were wars among tribes, destructive fires, and death among their people. So it’s clearly their history that haunts Seattle’s past. The Native Americans strongly believed in the Great Spirit. In fact, it was their belief in all spirits that guided them to a better life and understanding of all things around them, leaving us with a history we still need to learn from.
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF SEATTLE
BATTLE OF SEATTLE
The morning of January 26, 1856, Seattle was attacked by the Native Americans. At the time, Seattle was a settlement in the Washington Territory that had recently named itself after Chief Seattle. The Decatur, a U.S. Navy ship, was docked in Elliot Bay in anticipation of trouble with local Indians, but also as a deterrent against Native Americans from Vancouver Island who regularly raided both Native American and white settlements. In addition, warnings and inside information from Chief Seattle; his daughter, Princess Angeline; and Curly Jim, another local Native American, allowed Seattle’s fifty or so white residents to prepare for the attack. When the battle broke out it only lasted a single day and was reported to have only two causalities among the settlers. One was a man remembered only by the name of Wilson, who was watching the battle from the Felker Hotel’s verandah long enough to be hit and killed by a bullet fired from the forest. The other was an imprudent spectator who looked out from the temporarily opened door of one of the blockhouses. This is a pretty amazing count when it was reported that 160 men were dodging bullets for over ten hours that day. Plus the range of the Decatur’s guns kept the Native Americans at a distance. However the loss for the Native Americans was estimated at twenty-eight dead and eighty wounded among the one thousand fighting. At first the loss to the Native American’s side wasn’t known, due to the belief that the Native women were in charge of collecting the dead and wounded so none would be found. Afterwards, Snoqualmie Chief Pat Kanim offered a bounty for the heads of those who attacked Seattle ($80 for a chief and $20 for a warrior), and historian Clarence Bagley states, “During the month of February 1856, several invoices of these ghastly trophies were received and sent to Olympia.” The cause of the battle was land. As more and more settlers came to Seattle, more Native Americans were made to move to other ground, taking them away from their waters and hunting grounds.
BATTLE OF SEATTLE
See also: Mother Damnable in this section
CHIEF SEATTLE
Chief Noah Sealth (See-atch) was a leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish Native American tribes. Born around 1786, he died June 7, 1866, on the Suquamish reservation at Port Madison, Washington.
Like his father before him, Sealth was chief of the Suquamish tribe that settled on Bainbridge Island, and his mother was the daughter of a Duwamish chief. The Duwamish tribe settled on a small river in southwest Seattle across from the Puget Sound area.
History states that Chief Seattle was known to be a brave warrior—courageous, daring, and a great leader in his battles. He gained control over six tribes and pursued a working friendship with the Europeans like his father had done.
Chief Seattle was befriended by Seattle pioneer David Swinson Maynard, also known as “Doc.” Their friendship built the alliance between the Native Americans, and it also led to the naming of the city of Seattle. At the time the city was called Duwamps, named after the local Duwamish tribe. When Doc mentioned his interest in naming the city after Sealth in honor of the chief and his people, the chief was outraged due to the belief that if you speak the name of a deceased ancestor, it will disturb their spiritual rest. They worked out the problem, however, because the white settlers couldn’t pronounce his name correctly, which is why we say Seattle and not Sealth. Also, Doc didn’t think the chief would live too much longer and sweetened the deal with offering him a sum of fifty dollars for every year he lived. Surprisingly, the chief lived another thirty years, making it a sweeter deal for himself.
CHIEF SEATTLE
Besides the many other great things Chief Seattle has done, he was known for his poetic way with words. In one famous speech in December of 1854, Sealth addressed an outdoor gathering of Seattle locals on developing relations with the local Native Americans. Chief Seattle says in his native Lushootseed Language:
To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors and seemingly without regret. Your religion was written upon tablets of stone by the iron finger of your God so that you could not forget. The Red Man could never comprehend or remember it. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors—the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people.
Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant-lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely-hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them.
A few more moons, a few more winters, and not one of the descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful and hopeful than yours. But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people? Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see.
We will ponder your proposition, and when we decide we will let you know. But should we accept it, I here and now make this condition that we will not be denied the privilege without molestation of visiting at any time the tombs of our ancestors, friends, and children. Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as they swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy-hearted maidens, and even the little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits. And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among