Chief Seattle and the Town That Took His Name: The Change of Worlds for the Native People and Settlers on Puget Sound

This is the first thorough historical account of Chief Seattle and his times--the story of a half-century of tremendous flux, turmoil, and violence, during which a native American war leader became an advocate for peace and strove to create a successful hybrid racial community.

When the British, Spanish, and then Americans arrived in the Pacific Northwest, it may have appeared to them as an untamed wilderness. In fact, it was a fully settled and populated land. Chief Seattle was a powerful representative from this very ancient world. Historian David Buerge has been researching and writing this book about the world of Chief Seattle for the past 20 years. Buerge has threaded together disparate accounts of the time from the 1780s to the 1860s--including native oral histories, Hudson Bay Company records, pioneer diaries, French Catholic church records, and historic newspaper reporting. Chief Seattle had gained power and prominence on Puget Sound as a war leader, but the arrival of American settlers caused him to reconsider his actions. He came to embrace white settlement and, following traditional native practice, encouraged intermarriage between native people and the settlers, offering his own daughter and granddaughters as brides, in the hopes that both peoples would prosper. Included in this account are the treaty signings that would remove the natives from their historic lands, the roles of such figures as Governor Isaac Stevens, Chiefs Leschi and Patkanim, the Battle at Seattle that threatened the existence of the settlement, and the controversial Chief Seattle speech that haunts to this day the city that bears his name.

• The World of Chief Seattle: How Can One Sell the Air?
• Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place, Second Edition (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)
• Skid Road: An Informal Portrait of Seattle
• Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis
• A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest (The Civilization of the American Indian Series)
• Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle's Topography
• How Can One Sell The Air?: Chief Seattle's Vision
• The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest (Vintage Departures)
• Lost Seattle
• Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle's Topography