Chief Seattle and the Town That Took His Name by David M. Buerge

Author:David M. Buerge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sasquatch Books
Published: 2017-10-16T16:00:00+00:00

That summer, George Paige replaced Haley as Indian agent at Fort Kitsap, the third in less than six months. In his first annual report to James W. Nesmith, Stevens’s replacement as territorial superintendent of Indian affairs, Paige described the “most unamiable feelings” that divided the Suquamish at Fort Kitsap from their uprooted Duwamish kin, who, he said, regarded them “with feelings of hatred.” Aware of the ties to their homelands and their social connections, he wrote, “These two tribes are not actually hostile; on the contrary they are intermarried and frequently visit each other. The feeling of animosity was caused by a former feud and will prevent their living peaceably together on the reservation.” The feud harked back to upriver conflict with downriver groups, over trade, the treaty, and with the fact that the Suquamish had a reservation while the Duwamish did not.19

Paige sought a remedy. After failing to move several hundred Duwamish back to Fort Kitsap, he received permission from Governor Stevens to create a subagency at Holderness Point, today’s Duwamish Head, on Elliott Bay, where he placed a number of Duwamish in the care of subagent James Goudy. Reassured, Curley and his people joined them there. Paige had orders to keep them off the river, and since they were home and the salmon had yet to run, they obeyed.

Bolstered by the successful negotiation at Fox Island and believing that the volunteers had won a victory on the Grande Ronde, Stevens summoned interior groups to meet him in September for a second Walla Walla Council, where he expected to solidify a peace and force the surrender of those he branded guilty of starting the war. But the volunteers’ “victory” had actually been a massacre of women, children, and old men, which shocked and enraged native groups who had put themselves at risk supporting the Americans, and at Walla Walla the native leaders Stevens had assumed would be compliant were furious. They would surrender no one, and after the council’s angry conclusion, Stevens and his party were attacked and driven to seek protection from regular army troops encamped nearby under the command of Major Edward Steptoe, who had no love for the governor. Shocked and humiliated, Stevens returned to Olympia in no mood to be merciful to those he regarded as enemies.

Leschi headed his short list. Destitute and nearly naked, the Nisqually war leader showed up at Fort Nisqually in October 1856, asking Tolmie and Tolmie’s assistant, Edward Huggins, for powder and shot to hunt in order to survive. He also offered to cut off his right hand as a sign of peace. They refused his offer and did not give him supplies but, moved by his plight, advised him to remain hidden until tempers cooled.

Leschi traveled past the charred ruins of his birth village to a distant fishing camp on the upper Nisqually, where traumatized kin were gathering salmon, but he found no solace there. In anger, his nephew Sluggia and another man seized him and handed him over to Sydney Ford for a reward of fifty blankets.

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