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Newspaper Archive of
Shelton Mason County Journal
Shelton, Washington
February 14, 2019     Shelton Mason County Journal
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February 14, 2019
 
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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. + +