Talk:Battle of Seattle (1856)

T.S. Phelps, vocabulary, and other things

Like almost everyone else who has written about the battle, I have drawn heavily on T.S. Phelps. His account of the events is lively and circumstantial, but riven through with the racial prejudices of his time. I believe I have minimized the extent two which those have made it into the article.

I'm a little stumped on one vocabulary issue. Phelps generally uses the word "Indians", which has fallen out of favor, and "whites", which is more apropos but ignores the fact that at least one of the sailors was black, that some of the settlers were of various mixed ancestries, etc. I've used "natives" and "settlers", but I'm not totally satisfied with that choice either.

I'm not sure exactly which natives are Phelps's "Lake Indians". I don't think they correspond to one surviving organized tribe. I'm guessing that they form part of what are now the Duwamish, and that they were the ones who lived along what is no Lake Washington rather than along the Duwamish River. I'm sure the article could be greatly improved by someone who knows more of the history from the native side.

Also, I'm a little chagrined that I don't have a source handy that conveys what an incompetent and barbaric son of a bitch Governor Stevens was. Some of it comes through even in Phelps's narrative (he sails away saying "no problem here" less than a week before the attack, and you can imagine what a rebuke it was to him when Klakum et.al. were acquitted while he still had Patkanim out gathering scalps. (By the way, Bill Speidel has in one of his books an excellent anecdote about Patkanim showing up in the governor's office with his men, slapping scalps down on the desk, and demanding—and receiving—payment.) What he doesn't really get into was the degree to which the war was Stevens' fault in the first place, because he had forced a series of unequal treaties on the native peoples and had operated in bad faith at every turn. Probably as the article is further worked on, some of this should make it in. Some of this, but not nearly enough, can be found at Yakima War. Our article on Stevens (which, by the way, is completely unreferenced), seems reasonably accurate on his character. - Jmabel | Talk 07:10, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm no expert on this topic, but I've enjoyed Murray Morgan's book "Puget's Sound", which contained some fairly detailed history on the Puget Sound War, the Battle of Seattle, and conveys what an incompetent and barbaric SOB Gov Stevens was. There's a long section detailing the legal battles Steven's had to fight just to get Leschi hanged, and then many more afterwards. In the end he was found guilty of various crimes, but only had to pay a small fine. There's also an exciting courtroom scene in which supporters of Stevens and supporters of the Steilacoom judge drew and aimed their firearms at each other, nearly resulting in a courtroom shoot out. After reading it I long bemoaned how Stevens Pass and the nice ski resort there is named for this genocidal megalomaniac -- only to later learn that it is in fact named for a different Stevens; phew! Anyway, I agree that this page needs work and is rather heavily biased and sensationalized. Phelps is, according to the much more scholarly Morgan, a source to be taken with a very large grain of salt. If I find the time I'll try to do some editing here. Pfly 05:52, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Good article so far!

• I added the --NorthAmNative-- tag so that some of those contributors may be drawn to this article and, perhaps, answer some of the issues you bring up.
• Speidel certainly seems to agree with your assessment of Stevens!
• Is the Battle of Seattle (1856) part of a larger, named conflict involving the Indians in Washington Territory - perhaps the Puget Sound War? Is there some relationship between this event and the hanging of Nisqually Chief Leschi February 19, 1858? rewinn 04:22, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose it is part of the Puget Sound War, but I was unfamiliar with that term (and I live there).

There is no direct connection between this battle and the hanging of Chief Leschi. Leschi was hanged for a killing that historians seem generally to agree he did not commit and that was probably a legitimate act of war by whoever did commit it. Most of our article on Leschi is about the now nearly universal opinion that he was framed, an opinion that (as you can see from that article) had pretty strong currency even at the time and even among white settlers. - Jmabel | Talk 00:25, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm in Belltown myself. Growing up in Everett, I never heard a lot about Indian resistence to our settlement. There was actually an Indian corpse (or so it was said) on display at the Monte Cristo museum when I was a kid; something that would be inconceivable now (...as long as you don't look at those gross "Body" posters everywhere.) It would be interesting to find a history that combines the initial resistence of Patkanim (followed by his swift enlistment on "our" side; the raids by the Eastern Wa Indians that culminated in the Batte of Seattle (1856), and the fighting that let to Leschi's execution. Perhaps some local historian, or someone from United Indians of All Tribes would know. ... Anyway, thanks for getting this article going; it's quite interesting! rewinn 01:20, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I tried (and failed) a couple of years ago to get involvement in Wikipedia from someone at United Indians of All Tribes, but it wouldn't hurt to try again. I expect to have some time in January, I should go by Daybreak Star and try to talk to them again. - Jmabel | Talk 02:22, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Yakima War v. Puget Sound War

Which is the right assignment for this battle? rewinn 05:30, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

My somewhat lengthy response over at Talk:Puget Sound War Pfly 05:41, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Wars of Extermination

Just five days before the attack on Seattle, Governor Stevens had declared a "war of extermination" upon the Indians.

Interesting, I didn't know he'd said it straight out like that; there're parallel phrasing in various BC histories which cover the area/period - I know there's a statement in McGowan's War by DJ Hauka but I thought he was editorializing (though telling the truth); First Nations historians/poilticians describe what went down in British Columbia as genocide, but it far better suits what happened south of the line - which before partition (1846) had been the more populous of the two "halves" of the Columbia Department; not so afterwards huh? Anyway maybe in Hauka's appendices/footnotes he may point to other materials; I don't think the Akriggs are so harsh, I'll have to look in Begg and Howay/Scholefield, or keep my eye open for similar passages; anyway it's in Hauka for sure (which I don't own) but with what wording I'm not certain, i.e. that ears of extermination occurred in formerly British "territory" now south of the line in the wake of the end of joint occupancy. But interesting to know it from the source of the policy, and curious given Stevens' rather hagiographic image in popular history (to be someone who ordered what was effectively ethnic cleansing - ah, that might be Hauka's phrasing....).Skookum1 (talk) 21:21, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Morgan quotes Stevens as saying "war until the last hostile Indian is exterminated". Perhaps I'll add the word "hostile" to the line in the article, although in other speeches he seems rather clear in his general aim. In any case, the picture Morgan paints of Stevens is anything but hagiographic, just the opposite. Pfly (talk) 01:33, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Infobox changes

Changes "part of" from the very general Indian Wars to the more specific Puget Sound War. Changed territorial results from "Native inhabitans driven out of Seattle area" blank -- no territorial changes directly resulted from the Battle of Seattle. Natives were not driven from the Seattle area but rather large numbers continued to live in and around Seattle. The actual attacking party retreated, yes, but that's all. The Puget Sound War could be said to have resulted in territorial changes -- that of the reservations being redrawn, but not the Battle of Seattle so much. So I left that field blank. Changed result from "Decisive American Victory" to "American Victory". A group of Indians attacked and were unable to take Seattle. Is that decisive? Phelps' account might give that sense, Morgan's makes it sound like a draw. Changed commander field for Indians from "Chief Leschi", and casualties from "28 killed, 80 wounded" both to Unknown. Phelps makes a claim about the Indian leaders and the casualties, but Morgan questions both and basically says no one knows. Also changed commander for the Americans from "Unknown" to Gansevoort, as he was commander of the Decatur and, by Morgan's account, basically the commander in charge. Pfly (talk) 23:53, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Lake Indians

Rereading this talk page just now I noticed the early comment about not being sure what Phelps means by the Lake Indians, and given Skookum1's guess and my (unsourced) edit, I thought I'd at least give a source. This is from the excellent book Native Seattle by Coll Thrush, in describing three main groups of natives who used to live in what is now Seattle (page 23): "Herring's House... was part of a larger constellation of communities whose members called themselves the People of the Inside Place... Their name for themselves would be anglicized as "Duwamish". A second group, known as the Hachooabsh, or Lake People, and usually described as a band of the Duwamish, lived in towns ringing [Lake Washington]. A third group, with connections to the first two as well as to [the Suquamish], was the Shilshoolabsh, the People of Tucked Away Inside, who took their name from their main settlement [at Salmon Bay]. ...three indigenous communities-- the Duwamish, the Lakes, and the Shilsholes." Pfly (talk) 04:13, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Also of interest, perhaps, is that these kind of place names, "Inside Place", "Tucked Away Inside", and a number of similar ones in the Puget Sound area, come from the need for coastal settlements to be hidden away on some little bay or inlet, to be more secure from raiders from the north (Tlingit, Haida, etc). Pfly (talk) 04:35, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Pierce County

Added Pierce County, Washington to the list of King and Thurston, and removed comment about Thurston being "directly south of" King County. Pierce County was in between the two, and saw a good share of the fighting -- perhaps the majority of it. The footnote to a HistoryLink.org article is good, and historylink does in fact mention only King and Thurston. But historylink.org has a number of mistakes in it and this seems to be one. There were no real "battles" in the Puget Sound War, but some of the main "skirmishes" occurred in Pierce County, including, if I'm not mistaken, the culminating battle at Connells Prairie. I know that was in Pierce County: I've been to the memorial monument there. I even took a picture. Pfly (talk) 04:14, 28 August 2008 (UTC)