The Lushootseed People
The Duwamish Tribe Today
John Harvey and Edward Clark
Pioneers on Southwest Lake Washington
The Bailey Peninsula
Seward Park
NEW: The proposed Seward Park Bridge
Evidence of human habitation in western Washington extends back at least 10,000 years. Archaeological excavations at West Point in Discovery Park confirm that the Seattle area has been inhabited by humans for at least four thousand years and probably much longer. The early inhabitants of this area settled predominantly along the sound, rivers, and lakes, which were important both for food and for transportation. These early inhabitants of Puget Sound and their descendents have been known in historic times as the Coast Salish or Puget Sound Salish. Their language is Lushootseed.
The written record of the Puget Sound Salish begins in 1792 with the voyage of George Vancouver. At that time, Vancouver observed evidence that smallpox was “common” and had probably decimated the native populations. Thus the Salish populations encountered by the first Euro-American settlers 60 years after Vancouver were probably only a fraction of those present a few generations previously. One of those who survived this period was Chief Seattle, who recalled Vancouver’s visit when he was a small boy. Seattle, whose father was Suquamish and whose mother was Duwamish, is thought to have spent his youth on the Duwamish and White Rivers south of Lake Washington. Seattle's daughter Kick-is-om-lo, later called Angeline, was said to have been born on Lake Washington near the present Atlantic City Park, which was then a marsh called Tuxwoo'kwib, or “place of loon”.
The indigenous people who lived on Lake Washington at the time of Euro-American settlement referred to the lake as xachu and called themselves the xachua’bsh (hah-chu-AHBSH), or “lake people”. The lake drained out the Black River in what is now Renton. The Black River joined the Cedar and White (now Green) Rivers to become the Duwamish River, which emptied into Elliot Bay.
The xachua’bsh called the peninsula that now forms Seward Park skEba’kst (skuh-BAHKST), from the word for “nose”. They referred to the isthmus as cqa'lapsEb (TSKAH-lap-suhb), from the word for “neck”. The isthmus was only a few hundred feet wide at the time and became flooded seasonally, turning the peninsula into an island. A large marsh occupied the area to the north of the modern park entrance circle, draining into what is now Andrews Bay. The natural resources of the lake, bay, and peninsula were probably important to the xachua’bsh from an early date.
The xachua'bsh are thought to have had two longhouses near Seward Park, perhaps on Brighton Beach at a place called xaxao'Ltc (ha-HAO-hlch), the “sacred or taboo place”. Additional longhouses were found on the southwest shore at SExti'tcb or “by means of swiming” (Bryn Mawr), at TL’Ltcus (TLEELH-chus) or “little island” (Pritchard’s Island), and to the north at Leschi Park, called Fleaburg by the Euro-American settlers.
On the east shore, villages were found at sa'tsakaL, or “water at head of a bay” (Mercer Slough) and cbaltu, or “place where things are dried” (May Creek). Several additional villages were located at Union Bay and further north on the lake.
Major settlements were found south of the lake in the Renton area. Several villages were located along the Black, Cedar, and Duwamish Rivers. These people were called txwduwa'bsh or “inside people”, which became anglicized as “Duwamish” or similar variants. The name referred to those who lived on the duw (“inside” or “inland”) river. The name was transferred by Euro-American settlers to the river, to the lake, to their fledgling city on Elliott Bay (known first as Duwamps before it was renamed Seattle), and eventually to all the native people of the Seattle area.
The longhouses and villages were used primarily in the winter months (November to March). Longhouses were made of split cedar planks and lined with cattail mats. Each longhouse held multiple families. Each village had a few to several longhouses, usually including a potlatch house. Winters were spent singing the songs of the spirit helpers that gave each person power, holding potlatch ceremonies, and doing other rituals.
In the spring, families dispersed to take advantage of various food resources. They traveled about, living in temporary shelters until the salmon season ended in the fall.During spring on skEba'kst (the peninsula), women probably gathered salmonberry shoots and bracken fern fiddleheads, while men hunted deer or elk grazing on the skunk cabbage. Women would have gathered important wetland plants from the marshy cqa’lapsEb (isthmus), such as cattails for mats and wapato (“Indian potatoes”) for food. In late spring families would gather shellfish from the sound. Crayfish and freshwater mussels were available in the lake.
Women would also have gathered or traded for camas from nearby prairies. These open areas were regularly burned to eliminate encroaching trees and shrubs. This helped encourage certain berries, fern roots, bulbs and other useful plants. A cleared area may have been maintained around the longhouses at Brighton Beach by such intentional burning. Garry oaks, whose thick bark helps them survive fires, are typically associated with prairies, and their presence at Seward and Martha Washington Parks suggests that a prairie extended between these parks. The oaks may have been planted by the xachua’bsh for their acorns, which were eaten. In the summers, xachua’bsh women turned to gathering berries. Seward Park has thimbleberries, salal, black cap raspberries, salmonberries, trailing blackberries, serviceberries, strawberries, huckleberries, and others. The berries were eaten fresh, or dried and formed into cakes to preserve them for winter.
In midsummer the men became busy with the
fishing season, which lasted through November. Silver salmon entered
Wetmore Slough (now Genesee Park) to spawn in sqa’ts1d, or “blocked
mouth” (Genessee Creek, which formerly drained Rainier Valley). Possibly
the name of the creek indicates that a fishing weir blocked the mouth
of the stream. Such weirs were made from the willows that occur
abundantly along the lakeshore. Fish were dried on racks to preserve
them for the winter months. During the long wet winter, the diet of
dried fish and berries was supplemented by hunting ducks, beaver,
muskrat, raccon, otter, and bear.
On the east shore, villages were
found at sa’tsakal, or “water at head of a bay” (Mercer Slough) and
šbal’t, or “place where things are dried” (May Creek). Additional
villages were located at the north end of the lake. Major settlements were found
south of the lake in the Renton area. Several villages were located
along the Black, Cedar, and Duwamish Rivers, including one called
txwduwa’bš or “inside people”, which became anglicized as “Duwamish” or
similar variants. The name referred specifically to this village, but it
was also a general term for those who lived on the duw (“inside”or
“inland”) river. The name was transferred by white settlers to the
river, the lake, their fledgling city on Elliott Bay (known as Duwamps
before it was renamed Seattle), and eventually to all the native people
of the Seattle area.
Besides providing food, the lake was home to
powerful spirits. The previously mentioned “taboo place” xaxao'lc at
Brighton Beach south of the peninsula derives its name from the fact
that a supernatural spirit was said to live in the lake there. The
unusual sound of the babbling waters at this place indicated its
presence.
Near Colman Park lived an ?ya’hos, a horned
spirit that was associated with landslides and earthquakes. Remarkably,
this is the approximate location of the Seattle Fault, which moved more
than 20 feet vertically about 1100 years ago. This quake caused a
landslide at South Point on Mercer Island, sending a large section of
forest into the lake. Little earth beings were said to inhabit the tree
stumps there and drove insane a man trying to harvest the bark from the
stumps.
In 1854 and 1855 Governor Isaac
Stevens succeeded in getting representatives of the Puget Sound Salish
to sign treaties in which they agreed to move onto reservations in
exchange for certain rights and guarantees. Discontent over the terms of
the treaties led to the Indian war of 1856, which included an Indian
attack that failed to take the town of Seattle. The lake and river
people who became known as the Duwamish were ordered to go to the
reservation at Port Madison, but most refused to go. Proposals to grant a
reservation in the Black River (Renton) area were opposed by
Euro-American settlers, and the Duwamish were never granted a
reservation or other treaty rights. Today most Duwamish still live
in Seattle and King County. They have fought for decades to gain federal
recognition as a tribe with treaty rights. In the last days of the
Clinton administration, they were finally granted official recognition,
but this decision was voided by the Bush administration. They continue
to seek federal recognition, and to maintain and adapt their traditions
in the modern world. They are currently working to build a longhouse to
act as a tribal and cultural center. Duwamish tribe website The peninsula that comprises
Seward Park was one of the first locations claimed by white settlers in
the Seattle area. Who were these pioneering settlers and what did they
do here? In 1850 Col. Isaac Ebey of
Olympia set out to explore Puget Sound in a canoe, probably with hired
Lushootseed guides. He traveled up the Duwamish and Black Rivers, and
became the first white settler to see the lake that his guides called
xacu (hah-chu) in Lushootseed or hyas chuck in the Chinook jargon. Ebey
called it Lake Geneva. Ebey presumably saw the Seward Park peninsula,
but he did not mention it in the report he made of his trip.
Nevertheless, his favorable report on the region soon attracted other
settlers. The first white settlers on Lake
Washington were John Harvey and Edward A. Clark. John Harvey, an
Englishman, went to sea at an early age and eventually came to
California in 1849, where he worked in the gold mines. There he met
Edward. A. Clark, a former clergyman from Pennsylvania. Clark had
married Susannah Crist in 1847, but he left her and a son behind in
Pennsylvania when he went to California in 1850, probably to hunt gold.
Disenchanted with the gold rush, Harvey and Clark, both age 24, took a
ship north, entering Oregon Territory on March 17, 1852. They arrived at
Alki on Puget Sound by early April, when Harvey (and probably also
Clark) worked for John Low of the Denny party under a contract to get
pilings. After completing the contract,
Harvey and Clark staked adjoining claims on Lake Washington in the
Seward Park-Brighton Beach area on April 10, 1852, about the same time
that the Denny party was moving from Alki to Pioneer Square. They shared
a cabin that spanned the common boundary of their claims so that each
could live on his claim but not be alone in the wilderness. The use of
the name “Clark’s Prairie” suggests that they chose their claims on an
area previously maintained as a clearing by the Lake Indians (xacuabš),
near a sacred Taboo Place on
Brighton Beach. Like most other pioneer men,
John Harvey worked for Henry Yesler's sawmill in the early years,
logging the Hanford and Holgate claims that ran from Elliot Bay up
Beacon Hill. He invested his earnings in his claim, making over $2000 of
improvements. According to a somewhat fictionalized account of Clark’s
life by pioneer Cornelius Hanford, Clark worked for George McClellan
preparing the report of the transcontinental railroad survey of 1853. In the fall of 1853, settlers in
Renton built a mill and a dam on the Black River, which raised the lake
by six feet in six weeks and blocked the free passage of canoes. This
probably turned the peninsula on Harvey and Clark’s doorstep into an
island, since the peninsula is not mentioned in the description of their
claim boundaries recorded for King County during this period. The lake
remained at this level until the dam and mill were burned during the
Indian war of 1855-56.
By 1854, E. A. Clark owned “a pretentious
two-story frame building” near Yesler’s sawmill, which he called his
“What-Cheer-House”. The house was located on the southwest corner of
what is currently First Avenue South and Yesler Way. Although settlers
were required to live on their claims for four years in order to receive
title to them, many settlers whose claims were outside the growing
village of Seattle maintained a second residence in town. With his new
location in town, Clark became the county auditor and a justice of the
peace in 1855. Harvey remained on his farm on Clark’s Prairie, and
Harvey family tradition suggests that he may have taken an Indian wife
during this period. This was a common practice among Euro-American
pioneer men, who outnumbered Euro-American women by about tenfold.
A traveler, James McCormick, was
murdered on Lake Union in July, 1853, but the murder was not discovered
until the following spring of 1854. Two Indians were lynched for the
murder, and Clark led an angry mob that hoped to hang a third young
Indian accused (and later acquitted) of being involved in the murder.
Sheriff Carson Boren prevented the lynching. The young Indian who
escaped Clark’s noose was later known as Cheshiahud or “Lake John”. He
became a friend of David Denny and lived for many years on Portage Bay.
In the fall and winter of 1855-1856, hostilities
broke out between some Indians and the Euro-American settlers,
primarily over discontent with the treaties enacted by Governor Isaac
Stevens in 1854-1855. Harvey moved off his claim for ten months during
this war, and it is likely that Clark did the same. These hostilities
climaxed in the “Battle of Seattle” in January of 1856. Hostile Indians
includingYakamas and Klickiats from east of the mountains assembled on
Lake Washington to stage an attack on Seattle. Many friendly Indians
took refuge in Seattle, including Cheshiahud.
The settlers retreated to a
blockhouse on Eliott Bay at the end of Cherry St. Although the battle
lasted only one day and had only two known fatalities, nearly every
building in King County outside the village of Seattle was burned,
including the cabin and outbuildings of Harvey and Clark and the dam on
the Black River that had raised the lake. After the war, Harvey relocated,
eventually becoming one of the founding citizens of Snohomish, where
his descendents run the Harvey Airfield. Clark presumably continued to
live in his What-Cheer-House and became Seattle's third schoolteacher,
where he made such a lasting impression on young Cornelius Hanford that
Hanford later wrote a fictionalized biography of his teacher. Clark sold
his claim to the succeeding teacher David Graham on December 28, 1858
for $1600. A week later on January 6, 1859, Harvey also sold his claim
to David Graham. Clark became Seattle's first
photographer and opened a studio, probably in the What-Cheer-House. It
was in front of this house that Clark took his two surviving photos,
both of Henry and Sara Yesler’s home across the street. Clark died from
unknown causes in 1860 at the age of 32. Although his wife and son knew
of Clark’s claim on Lake Washington, they apparently never came to
Seattle and were unaware that it had been sold to David Graham until
years after Clark’s death. Cheshiahud became a friend of
David Denny and was sometimes known as Denny John. He had two wives;
first Sbeilsdot or Lucy Annie and then Tleboletsa or Madeline. He
appears to have lived at sa’tsakaL, or Mercer Slough, in the 1870s,
where his daughter Jennie Davis grew up. He is thought to have lived on land on the
southwest lakeshore near at SExt3i’tc1b (Bryn Mawr) until about 1880,
when he sold it and bought land from David Denny at the foot of Shelby
Street on Portage Bay. Sbeilsdot died about 1885, but Cheshiahud lived
for many years on Portage Bay with Tleboletsa. His final years were spent
at the Port Madison Reservation. In 1927, his daughter Jennie Davis
provided a list of the villages along Lake Washington that is a primary
source of current knowledge of the village locations. David Graham and his older
brother Walter were from Putnam, New York. Walter left New York in March
1853 at the age of 24 for Aurora, Illinois, where he stayed only
briefly before setting out for California to find gold. He soon made his
way to Seattle in the fall of 1853. He worked in Yesler's mill
initially, then bought a farm on the Duwamish River in 1854 including
what is now Allentown and Duwamish Riverbend Hill Park.
During the Battle of Seattle in
1856, he was famed for leaving the blockhouse and making his way to
Thomas Mercer's house to bake biscuits so the children would have
something to eat. The smoke of his fire caught the attention of the
Indians, who fired on him, and he fled from the house with the baked
biscuits to the blockhouse, providing the only food of the day. His farm
on the Duwamish was burned in the war. Later that year he married
Elizabeth Ann (Eliza) Mercer, age 15, daughter of Thomas Mercer. They
were married by E. A. Clark. Mercer Girls: David Graham followed his
brother west, arriving in Seattle in April 1857. He worked as a
surveyor's helper and then succeeded E. A. Clark as the schoolteacher.
He bought Harvey's and Clark's claims probably with the intention of
working the farm started by Harvey.
Donation land claims in south Seattle were surveyed by the 1861
cadastral survey. The boundaries of Harvey’s and Clark’s claims were
affected by the change in lake level after the Black River dam was
burned in 1856. Perhaps to ensure that the claims were the legal size,
the boudaries were re-assigned along the survey transects, so that David
Graham’s property now included the isthmus of the peninsula as well as
the adjacent “mainland”. The 1861 survey notes refer to the peninsula
as "Andrews' peninsula" and the bay as "Andrews' Bay", but no Andrews is
known to have lived in the vicinity and it remains a mystery for whom
the bay is named.
In 1861, David married Suzanna
Mercer, the sister of Eliza. Suzanna hated farming, so they lived in
Seattle rather than on the lake. Her sister Eliza bore Walter two
children before she died in October of 1862 from an infection resulting
from a riding accident.
In 1863 David and Suzanna traded their claims on Lake Washington for
Walter's farm on the Duwamish. David convinced Suzanna to move to the
farm for one season, and they ended up staying 12 years. Eventually they
became the first white citizens in Washington Territory to adopt
children. In 1863 Walter bought an
additional lot on the west side of Andrews Bay, north of Harvey's claim.
Together with Harvey's and Clark's old claims, he owned 334 acres along
a mile of lakeshore between the present day streets of Hudson and
Myrtle, including the isthmus of the peninsula. Walter never owned the
main part of the peninsula, but later it was nevertheless referred to as
"Graham's peninsula" in the journal of Clara Collman, as the Grahams
were the nearest residents. Walter made his home in Brighton Beach, near
Eddy St. and 57th Ave. It seems likely that this was previously the
site of Harvey’s and Clark’s cabin. He planted an apple orchard along
the lakeshore just south of the present Graham Street. In May of 1864, Eliza’s and
Suzanna’s uncle Asa Mercer brought to Seattle the first set of “Mercer
girls" from the East, intended to be brides for Seattle pioneers. One of
the new arrivals was Catherine Adams Stickney. Catherine Adams of
Townsend, Massachusetts had married her neighbor Alvah Stickney in 1858,
but divorced him soon afterwards. Within two months of her arrival in
Seattle, she married Walter Graham and became the first white woman to
live in the Seward Park area. Walter sold 100 acres of his
land south of Graham Street to Asa Mercer in 1865. Asa in turn gave this
land to John and Zipporah Wilson in 1869 to repay a $1500 loan after
Asa went bankrupt during his second expedition for brides. The Wilsons
made their home on the present site of Martha Washington Park. The same
year Catherine Stickney died.
Walter soon returned to New York and brought back his childhood friend
Elizabeth Crommon to be his third wife. She bore him two more children.
In 1874 they sold 40 acres of their land on Graham Hill between Juneau
and Graham Streets to Roswell and Mary Scott, and moved temporarily to
Paso Robles, California. In 1882 the Grahams sold their land north of
Juneau Street, including the north side of the isthmus, to B. W. Johns,
retaining only 65 acres adjacent to the south side of the isthmus. B. W. Johns sold half of the
land to Judge Cornelius H. Hanford (E. A. Clark’s biographer) the
following year, and they platted the property as B. W. John's and C.
Hanford's 5- Acre Tracts in 1887. Ownership of Graham Hill returned to
the Grahams in 1885, but. in 1889 the Grahams sold the remainder of
their property to John W. Edwards, a lumber mill manager and real estate
investor. Edwards sold it the same day to Joshua M. Sears of Boston,
who placed it in a trust for his wife Sarah Choate Sears. Joshua Sears was the richest man
in Boston. His wife Sarah was an artist who used her family wealth to
help promote other artists. A portrait of her was painted by John Singer
Sargent. Except for the northern tip, all
of the peninsula to the east of Graham's property was bought from the
government by Philip Ritz in September 1868 for $1.25/acre. The
northernmost 12.75 acre lot on the peninsula was bought two months later
by John S. Maggs for $15.94.
Philip Ritz was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1827, and went to
California in 1850 for the gold rush. He quickly decided that the gold
rush wasn't for him, and made his way to Corvalis, Oregon where he
became an orchardist and nurseryman. He was sufficiently successful that
when he sold his business to move to Walla Walla in 1863, it was valued
at $10,000 and carried over 1,000 kinds of plants. His Columbia Valley
Nursery in Walla Walla prospered for decades. In 1867 he became involved in
lobbying efforts promoting the Northern Pacific Railroad. When visiting
Commencement Bay in 1868 to assess it as a terminus for the railroad, he
suggested that Commencement City change its name to Tacoma, the
Lushootseed name for nearby Mount Rainier. Around the same time he began
investing in land in King County and in several other counties in
Washington. In September of 1868 he paid $188.44 for 151 acres of the
Seward Park peninsula. In 1878 his involvement with railroad
construction led him to spend a few years in Adams County, where the
town of Ritzville grew from his settlement there. He died in Walla Walla
in 1889. John S. Maggs was an employee of
Henry Webster of Port Townsend, who had an Indian trading post in Neah
Bay. Maggs' purchase of the tip of the Seward Park peninsula was one of
several waterfront purchases he made: he also bought Evergreen Point in
Medina, Webster Point in Laurelhurst (later sold to Webster), part of
Sand Point and part of Smith’s Cove. He sold the tip of the Seward Park
peninsula to Webster in 1883. Webster died the same year, leaving the
land to his widow Mary. In the 1890s, Maggs became President of the
Seattle Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company. In 1899 the John S. Maggs
Water Company was started from a spring on the west side of Lake Union
between Galer and Garfield. The company supplied water to the region
south of Lake Union until 1950. John Maggs at Point No Point lighthouse William E. Bailey was a
Pennsylvania investor and the son of the successful iron manufacturer
Charles L. Bailey of Harrisburg. William came to Puget Sound in 1888 and
settled in Seattle in March of 1889. In late March and early April he
bought the main part of the Seward Park peninsula from the recently
widowed Catherine Ritz and her daughters, the tip of the peninsula from
Mary Webster, and two six-acre lots on the isthmus of the peninsula from
Cornelius Hanford. He owned all of the peninsula except the south part
of the isthmus, which was bought by Joshua Sears in early April of the
same year. John Singer Sargent's Mrs. Joshua Montgomery Sears
Bailey was quick to capitalize
on business opportunities in the wake of the June 1889 fire, and
acquired significant properties downtown as well as numerous other
properties. He was president or vice-president of two or three
investment firms. He bought the Seattle Press in 1890 and the Times in
1891, and convinced his friend Erastus Brainerd to run the combined
Press-Times. The paper did poorly and Bailey sold it in 1895. He was
appointed one of three Parks Commissioners from 1890-1896, but he moved
to Philadelphia before his term was completed.<
In 1892 during Bailey's tenure
as Parks Commissioner, the prominent landscape architect E. O. Schwagerl
proposed acquiring the “Bailey Peninsula” as part of his masterplan for
the new park system, begun when David Denny donated the present Denny
Park to the city in the 1880s. Schwagerl was hired as Seattle’s second
Parks Superintendent the following year to put his plan of parks and
connecting boulevards into motion. Clearly Bailey must have known of
Schwagerl’s plan shortly after he bought the peninsula. In 1900 George
F. Cotterill organized volunteers to build 25 miles of bicycle trails
that became the foundation of the boulevard system. In 1903, the city hired the
Olmsted Brothers to develop a city-wide plan for parks. The Olmsteds
expanded on Schwagerl's plans and Cotterill's bike paths, and hoped to
make the Bailey peninsula the most important acquisition of the park
system. The Bailey family was aware of this proposal but refused to set a
price for years. Finally in 1908 they offered to sell for $2000/acre.
The city thought this was exorbitant, and after passing a park bond in
1910 proceeded with condemnation, eventually paying a fair-market value
of $1500/acre. The peninsula sold for a total of $322,020. In the aftermath of the
successful Alaska-Yukon Exposition of 1909, the new park was named after
William H. Seward, Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State who arranged
for the purchase of Alaska. In the first few years trails
and a picnic area were built in the park. Lake Washington Boulevard was
extended from Mt. Baker to Seward Park in 1913. The Rainier Valley
Fiesta in 1915 drew thousands of people to the new park on what was now
called the “Scenic Peninsula”. by Paul Talbert
on Southwest Lake Washington
1852-1860
