February 14, 2019 Shelton Mason County Journal | ![]() |
©
Shelton Mason County Journal. All rights reserved. Upgrade to access Premium Tools
PAGE 11 (11 of 40 available) PREVIOUS NEXT Jumbo Image Save To Scrapbook Set Notifiers PDF JPG
February 14, 2019 |
|
Website © 2025. All content copyrighted. Copyright Information Terms Of Use | Privacy Policy | Request Content Removal | About / FAQ | Get Acrobat Reader ![]() |
T
+
Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019 - She~ton-Mason County Journal - Page A-11
Chief Seattle, who led
the Duwamish and
Suquamish tribes, was
a renowned warrior,
orator and visionary.
Everett author David
Buerge will talk about
Seattle and the Town
That Took His Name"
from 1:30 to 3 p.m.
Feb. 24 at the Harstine
Island Community
Hall. Admission is
free. Photo courtesy of
WikiPedia Commons
By Gordon Weeks
gordon@masoncoun corn
Chief Seattle is a towering figure, a
warrior and an orator who had a vision
for a prosperous, multi-racial Society
in his namesake city.
Yet the chief of the Duwamish and
Suquamish tribes poses an extreme
challenge to historians he wrote
nothing during his lifetime, from 1780
to 1866.
When an agent suggested Everett
historian/author David M. Buerge
write about Chief Seattle, Buerge
thought, "It's like writing a book about
Jesus or King Arthur," he recalled in a
telephone interview with the Shelton-
Mason County Journal.
Nevertheless, Buerge said he
learned to "read between the lines" of
some of the chiefs purported public
statements during more than 20 years
of research on.the man.
Buerge will talk about his book,
"Chief Seattle and the Town That
Took His Name" from 1:30 to 3 p.m.
Feb. 24 at the Harstine Island Com-
munity Hall, 3371 E. Harstine Island
Road N. Admission is free.
The lecture is part of the Inquiring
Minds/Conversations Series. The book
will be available for purchase.
Buerge has been researching the
Seattle area, before and after it be-
came a city, since the mid-1970s. He
is the author of 14 books of history and
biography.
Buerge said he was working as a
part-time teacher, making $6,000 a
year. when he took four months off
work to research and write about
Chief Seattle. But his work was reject-
ed, and dismissed as a "quiet book," he
recalls. That rejection angered him.
"I thought, 'I'm going to do this," he
said. "I'll show them.'"
Buerge said he wishes he had more
information about Chief Seattle's ear-
ly life.
"He was a very angry man, espe-
cially when he was younger, but he
learned to manage it," Buerge said.
The author said he believes Chief
Seattle's anger was due a family stig-
ma attached to having a grandparent
who was enslaved before returning to
the tribe.
Diseases killed many in the tribes,
opening the door to people who showed
strength and character.
'~/ou became a leader even if you
didn't have noble lineage," Buerge
said.
Chief Seattle is known for three
speeches.
In 1853, Washington Territorial
Gov. Issac Stevens began buying up
or seizing Salish lands and removing
the tribes to reservations. When the
governor visited Seattle in Decem-
ber 1954, the chief made a speech
lamenting that the day of the Native
American had passed and the future
belonged to the white settlers. The
person transcribing that speech was
Dr. Henry J. Smith, a surgeon with
a penchant for florid Victorian po-
etry.
In 1855, Seattle spoke briefly at the
formal signing of the Port Madison
treaty, which settled the Suquamish
on their reservation in North Kitsap
County. Three years later, he spoke
for the last time on the record, won-
dering why the U.S. Congress had not
signed the treaty, leaving his tribe to
languish in poverty.
The accounts of these speech-
es "didn't make sense to me,"
Buerge said. He said he was struck
by how often the chiefs would
~ay, "I don't want to say more."
"I wondered, 'Why didn't they want to
say more?'" the author said. Buerge's
conclusion: They didn't want to speak
for the tribe.
"They were hedging their bets, des-
perately," he said.
Chief Seattle moved to Olympia,
and invited white settlers to come
north to live with the tribe; he fig-
ured inter-marriage was the best way
to avoid domination, just as they had
done with other tribes.
"He has been the war leader,"
Buerge said. "He made the decision
to cooperate with the Americans
and create a hybrid-racial society."
Instead, reservation land was specifi-
cally designated far from white settle-
ments.
Buerge is working on a book on the
mythology surrounding Mount Raini-
er. To the natives, it is "maiden, moth-
er, hag," Buerge said. The new settlers
loved it enough' to preserve it by creat-
ing a national park, he said.
+ +