Chief Seattle

"Chief Sealth" redirects here. You may be looking for Chief Sealth High School.

The only known photograph of Chief Seattle, taken in the 1860s

"Chief Sealth" (Ts'ial-la-kum), better known today as Chief Seattle (also Sealth, Seathl or See-ahth) (c. 1786 – June 7, 1866), 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 the Chief.

Biography

Sealth was born around 1786 on or near Blake Island, Washington. His father, Schweabe, was a leader of the Suquamish tribe, and his mother was Scholitza 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 very tall 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 his voice is said to have carried half a mile or more when he addressed an audience.

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. A second wife, Olahl, bore him sons and daughters. The most famous of his children was Kikisoblu or Princess Angeline, the daughter of La-Dalia. After the death of one of his sons in battle, he sought and received baptism in the Roman Catholic Church, adopting the baptismal name Noah, probably in 1848 near Olympia, Washington. His children were also baptized and raised in the faith.

For all his skill, Sealth was gradually losing ground to the more powerful Patkanim of the Snohomish when white settlers starting 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.

Following the Battle of Seattle (1856), Sealth 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. He died June 7, 1866, on the Suquamish reservation at Port Madison, Washington.

Legacy

• Sealth's grave site is at the Suquamish Tribal Cemetery. A marble marker placed in the 1890s by Seattle pioneer Arthur Armstrong Denny calls him 'Noah Sealth' and this spelling is used on many of his other memorials. The site has been restored most recently by the addition of native sculpture 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 purported 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. No-one alive today knows what Sealth said, since he spoke in the Lushootseed language, someone translated his words into Chinook Indian trade language, and a third persons translated that into English.

None-the-less, a Dr. Henry Smith claims to have taking notes of the English translation, and expanded them into a flowery speech 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".

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 1971, Ted Perry wrote a new version for the script of an ecological science fiction film Home, produced for the Southern Baptist Convention's Christian Radio and Television Commission.

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 "an unhistorical artifact of someone's fertile literary imagination".

See also

• Battle of Seattle (1856)

References

• Murray Morgan, Skid Road, 1951, 1960, and other reprints, ISBN 0-295-95846-4
• William C. ("Bill") Speidel, Doc Maynard, The Man Who Invented Seattle, Nettle Creek Publishing Company, Seattle, 1978.
• Noah Seattle by Chiefseattle.com