History of Seattle before 1900 - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Introduction

Two conflicting perspectives exist for the early history of Seattle. There is what one might call the "establishment" view, which favors the centrality of the Denny Party

Denny Party

The Denny Party is a group of white pioneers credited with founding Seattle, Washington because they settled at Alki Point on November 13, 1851.A wagon party headed by Arthur A. Denny left Cherry Grove, Illinois on April 10, 1851...

(generally the Denny, Mercer, Terry, and Boren families), and Henry Yesler

Henry Yesler

Henry L. Yesler was an entrepreneur considered to be Seattle, Washington's first economic father and first millionaire. He arrived in Seattle in 1852 and built a steam-powered sawmill, which provided numerous jobs for those early settlers and Duwamish tribe members...

. A second, less didactic view, advanced particularly by historian Bill Speidel

Bill Speidel

William C Speidel known as Bill Speidel was a columnist for The Seattle Times and a self-made historian who wrote the books Sons of the Profits and Doc Maynard, The Man Who Invented Seattle about the people who settled and built Seattle, Washington.Speidel is also credited with being one of the...

and others such as Murray Morgan, sees David Swinson "Doc" Maynard

David Swinson Maynard

David Swinson "Doc" Maynard was an American pioneer and doctor, and one of Seattle's primary founders. He was an effective civic booster and, compared to other white settlers, a relative advocate of Native American rights...

as a key figure, perhaps the key figure. In the late nineteenth century, when Seattle had become a thriving town, several members of the Denny Party still survived; they and many of their descendants were in local positions of power and influence. Maynard was about ten years older and died relatively young, so he was not around to make his own case. The Denny Party were generally conservative Methodists, teetotalers

Teetotalism

Teetotalism refers to either the practice of or the promotion of complete abstinence from alcoholic beverages. A person who practices teetotalism is called a teetotaler or is simply said to be teetotal...

, Whigs

Whig Party (United States)

The Whig Party was a political party of the United States during the era of Jacksonian democracy. Considered integral to the Second Party System and operating from the early 1830s to the mid-1850s, the party was formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic...

and Republicans

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

, while Maynard was a drinker and a Democrat

Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

. He felt that well-run prostitution

Prostitution

Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...

could be a healthy part of a city's economy. He was also on friendly terms with the region's Native Americans

Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

, while many of the Denny Party were not. Thus Maynard was not on the best of terms with what became the Seattle Establishment, especially after the Puget Sound War

Puget Sound War

The Puget Sound War was an armed conflict that took place in the Puget Sound area of the state of Washington in 1855–56, between the United States Military, local militias and members of the Native American tribes of the Nisqually, Muckleshoot, Puyallup, and Klickitat...

. He was nearly written out of the city's history until Morgan's 1951 book Skid Road and Speidel's research in the 1960s and 1970s.

Founding

What is now Seattle has been inhabited since at least the end of the last glacial period (c. 8000 BCE—10,000 years ago). Archaeological excavations at what is now called West Point

West Point (Seattle)

West Point is the westernmost point in Seattle, Washington, USA, jutting into Puget Sound from the Magnolia neighborhood. It also marks the northern extent of Elliott Bay; a line drawn southeastward to Alki Point marks the western extent of the bay. At the point itself is the 1881 West Point...

in Discovery Park

Discovery Park (Seattle)

Discovery Park is a 534 acre park in the peninsular Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. It is the city's largest public park and contains 11.81 miles of walking trails. United Indians of All Tribes' Daybreak Star Cultural Center is within the park's boundaries...

, Magnolia

Magnolia, Seattle, Washington

Magnolia is the second largest neighborhood of Seattle, Washington by area. It occupies a hilly peninsula northwest of downtown. Magnolia is isolated from the rest of Seattle, connected by road to the rest of the city by only three bridges over the tracks of the BNSF Railway: W. Emerson Place in...

confirm settlement within the current city for at least 4,000 years and probably much longer. The area of toˈlɑltu ("herring

Herring

Herring is an oily fish of the genus Clupea, found in the shallow, temperate waters of the North Pacific and the North Atlantic oceans, including the Baltic Sea. Three species of Clupea are recognized. The main taxa, the Atlantic herring and the Pacific herring may each be divided into subspecies...

house") and later hɑˈʔɑpus ("where there are horse clam

Horse clam

The horse clam are related to the Geoduck, though smaller, with shells up to eight inches long , weight to 3–4 lb . Two similar species of horse clams inhabit the Pacific coast intertidal zones: the pacific gaper, Tresus nuttallii, more abundant south to California; and the fat gaper, T...

s") at the then-mouth of the Duwamish River

Duwamish River

The Duwamish River is the name of the lower of Washington state's Green River. Its industrialized estuary is known as the Duwamish Waterway.- History :...

in what is now the Industrial District

Industrial District, Seattle, Washington

The Industrial District is the principal industrial area of Seattle, Washington. It is bounded on the west by the Duwamish Waterway and Elliott Bay, beyond which lies Delridge of West Seattle; on the east by Interstate 5, beyond which lies Beacon Hill; on the north by S King and S Dearborn Streets,...

had been inhabited since the 6th century CE. The Dkh^w'Duw'Absh (People of the Inside), and the Xachua'bsh (People of the Large Lake), of the (Skagit-Nisqually) Lushootseed

Lushootseed

Lushootseed is the language or dialect continuum of several SalishNative American groups of modern-day Washington state...

Coast Salish

Coast Salish languages are a subgroup of the Salishan language family. These languages are spoken by First Nations or Native American peoples inhabiting the territory that is now the southwest coast of British Columbia around the Strait of Georgia and Washington state around Puget Sound...

Native American

Native Americans in the United States

Nations occupied at least 17 villages in the mid-1850s (13 within what are now the city limits), living in some 93 permanent longhouse

Native American long house

Longhouses were built by native peoples in various parts of North America, sometimes reaching over but generally around wide. The dominant theory is that walls were made of sharpened and fire-hardened poles driven into the ground and the roof consisted of leaves and grass...

s (khwaac'ál'al) along the lower Duwamish River, Elliott Bay

Elliott Bay

Elliott Bay is the body of water on which Seattle, Washington, is located. A line drawn from Alki Point in the south to West Point in the north serves to mark the generally accepted division between the bay and the open sound...

, Salmon Bay

Salmon Bay

Salmon Bay is that part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal--which passes through the city of Seattle, linking Lake Washington to Puget Sound--that lies west of the Fremont Cut. It is the westernmost section of the canal, and empties into Shilshole Bay, which is part of Puget Sound. Because of the...

, Portage Bay

Portage Bay

Portage Bay is an arm of Seattle, Washington's Lake Union and is part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal. Its western limit can be said to be the Ship Canal Bridge, which carries Interstate 5 over the water; North Passage Point Park and South Passage Point Park sit on opposite shores between the...

, Lake Washington

Lake Washington

Lake Washington is a large freshwater lake adjacent to the city of Seattle. It is the largest lake in King County and the second largest in the state of Washington, after Lake Chelan. It is bordered by the cities of Seattle on the west, Bellevue and Kirkland on the east, Renton on the south and...

within what is now Seattle, as well as Lake Sammamish

Lake Sammamish

Lake Sammamish is a freshwater lake east of Seattle in King County, Washington, United States. The lake is long and wide, with a maximum depth of and a surface area of . It lies east of Lake Washington and west of the Sammamish Plateau, and stretches from Issaquah in the south to Redmond in...

, and the Duwamish

Duwamish River

The Duwamish River is the name of the lower of Washington state's Green River. Its industrialized estuary is known as the Duwamish Waterway.- History :...

, Black

Black River (Duwamish River)

The Black River, also known as the Duwamish River, was a river in King County in the U.S. state of Washington. It drained Lake Washington until 1916 when the opening of the Lake Washington Ship Canal lowered the lake, causing the Black River to dry up...

, and Cedar River

Cedar River (Washington)

The Cedar River is a river in the U.S. state of Washington. About long, it originates in the Cascade Range and flows generally west and northwest, emptying into the southern end of Lake Washington...

s in what is now metropolitan Seattle. The Dkh^w'Duw'Absh and Xachua'bsh are today represented by the Duwamish Tribe.

George Vancouver

George Vancouver

Captain George Vancouver RN was an English officer of the British Royal Navy, best known for his 1791-95 expedition, which explored and charted North America's northwestern Pacific Coast regions, including the coasts of contemporary Alaska, British Columbia, Washington and Oregon...

was the first European

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

to visit the Seattle area in May 1792 during his 1791-95 expedition

Vancouver Expedition

The Vancouver Expedition was a four-and-a-half-year voyage of exploration and diplomacy, commanded by Captain George Vancouver. The expedition circumnavigated the globe, touched five continents and changed the course of history for the indigenous nations and several European empires and their...

to chart the Pacific Northwest

Pacific Northwest

The Pacific Northwest is a region in northwestern North America, bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains on the east. Definitions of the region vary and there is no commonly agreed upon boundary, even among Pacific Northwesterners. A common concept of the...

; the first White forays for sites in the area were in the 1830s.

The founding of Seattle is usually dated from the arrival of the Denny Party

Denny Party

on November 13, 1851 at Alki Point. The group had travelled overland from the Midwest to Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon

Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

, then made a short ocean journey up the Pacific coast into Puget Sound

Puget Sound

Puget Sound is a sound in the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins, with one major and one minor connection to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean — Admiralty Inlet being the major connection and...

, with the express intent of founding a town. The next April, Arthur A. Denny

Arthur A. Denny

Arthur Armstrong Denny was present at the founding of Seattle, Washington, the acknowledged leader of the pioneer Denny Party, and later the city's wealthiest citizen and a 9-term member of the territorial legislature...

abandoned the original site at Alki in favor of a better-protected site on Elliott Bay

Elliott Bay

, near the south end of what is now downtown Seattle. Around the same time, Doc Maynard began settling the land immediately south of Denny's. Charles C. Terry and others hung on at Alki for a few more years, but eventually it became clear that Maynard and Denny had chosen the better location.

The first plat

Plat

A plat in the U.S. is a map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. Other English-speaking countries generally call such documents a cadastral map or plan....

s for Seattle were filed on May 23, 1853. Nominal legal land settlement was provisionally established in 1855 (with treaty terms for what is now Seattle not implemented). Doc Maynard's land claim lay south of today's Yesler Way, encompassing most of today's Pioneer Square

Pioneer Square, Seattle, Washington

Pioneer Square is a neighborhood in the southwest corner of Downtown Seattle, Washington, USA. It was once the heart of the city: Seattle's founders settled there in 1852, following a brief six-month settlement at Alki Point on the far side of Elliott Bay. The early structures in the neighborhood...

Historical District and the International District

International District, Seattle, Washington

The Chinatown-International District of Seattle, Washington is an ethnic enclave neighborhood and is the center of Seattle's Asian American community. The neighborhood is multiethnic, consisting mainly of people who are of Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino ethnicity...

. He based his street grid on strict compass bearings. The more northerly plats of Arthur A. Denny

Arthur A. Denny

and Carson D. Boren encompassed Pioneer Square north of what is now Yesler Way; the heart of the current downtown; and the western slope of First Hill

First Hill, Seattle, Washington

First Hill is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, named for the hill on which it is located. The hill, in turn, is so named for being the first hill one encounters traveling east from downtown Seattle toward Lake Washington....

. These had street grids that more or less followed the shoreline. The downtown grid from Yesler Way north to Stewart Street is oriented 32 degrees west of north; from Stewart north to Denny Way the orientation is 49 degrees west of north. The result is a tangle of streets where the grids clash. (See also Street layout of Seattle
Street layout of Seattle
The street layout of Seattle is based on a series of disjointed rectangular street grids. Most of Seattle and King County use a single street grid, oriented on true north. Near the center of town, various land claims were platted in the 19th century with differently oriented grids, which have...

.)

Both Alki and the settlement that was to become Seattle relied in their early decades on the timber industry, shipping out logs (and, later, milled timber) to build and rebuild San Francisco which, as Bill Speidel points out, kept burning down. Seattle and Alki offered plenty of trees to build San Francisco and plenty of hill

Hill

A hill is a landform that extends above the surrounding terrain. Hills often have a distinct summit, although in areas with scarp/dip topography a hill may refer to a particular section of flat terrain without a massive summit A hill is a landform that extends above the surrounding terrain. Hills...

s to slide them down to water. A climax forest of trees up to 1,000–2,000 years old and towering as high as nearly 400 feet (121.9 m) covered much of what is now Seattle. Today, none of that size remain anywhere in the world.

Relations with the natives

This section draws heavily on Bill Speidel, Sons of the Profits (1967) and Doc Maynard (1978). Doc Maynard and Murray Morgan, Skid Road (1951, 1960, 1982) are especially useful on the events regarding resistance nominally led by Kamiakim in the January 1856 attack on the town.

Generally before the Point Elliott Treaty

The early Seattle settlers had a sometimes rocky relationship with the local Native Americans

Native Americans in the United States

. There is no question that the settlers were steadily taking away native lands and, in many cases, treating the natives terribly. There were numerous deadly attacks by settlers against natives and by natives against settlers.

Bill Speidel writes in Sons of the Profits, "The general consensus of the community was that killing an Indian was a matter of no graver consequence than shooting a cougar or a bear..." Against this background, Doc Maynard stands out for his excellent relations with the natives. He and Chief Seattle

Chief Seattle

Chief Seattle , was a Dkhw’Duw’Absh chief, also known as Sealth, Seathle, Seathl, or See-ahth. A prominent figure among his people, he pursued a path of accommodation to white settlers, forming a personal relationship with David Swinson "Doc" Maynard. Seattle, Washington was named after him...

were friends and allies: Maynard certainly profited greatly from this friendship, but that should not diminish the fact that during the outbreak of violent hostilities in 1856 he risked the wrath of his fellow settlers by protecting neutral Indians. However, outside of some old-time trappers and traders, he was almost unique in his attitude.

Denny and Edward Lander (the latter was the first local federal judge) also stood out in that they believed that the law should be applied fairly and equally: to them, murder was murder, regardless of the race of the victim. However, it was impossible to get this view upheld by a jury. In Sons of the Profits Speidel recounts a case of two vigilantes who had hanged a native man. After a series of (possibly deliberate) irregularities in their trial, the jury acquitted these obviously guilty men on a technicality.

Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens

Isaac Stevens

Isaac Ingalls Stevens was the first governor of Washington Territory, a United States Congressman, and a brigadier general in the Union Army during the American Civil War until his death at the Battle of Chantilly...

probably did more damage to relations between settlers and natives than any one other person. He put a bounty on scalps of "bad Indians". He declared martial law to prevent Lander from issuing writs of habeas corpus
Habeas corpus
is a writ, or legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. The remedy can be sought by the prisoner or by another person coming to his aid. Habeas corpus originated in the English legal system, but it is now available in many nations...

for people who were held in jail for little other reason than sympathizing with the natives. On at least two occasions, he actually had Lander himself jailed.

Perhaps worst of all in its consequences for relations, he dealt dishonestly in treaties, among other things making oral promises that were not matched by what was written down. The local natives had at least a thirty-year history of dealing with the Hudson's Bay Company

Hudson's Bay Company

The Hudson's Bay Company , abbreviated HBC, or "The Bay" is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world. A fur trading business for much of its existence, today Hudson's Bay Company owns and operates retail stores throughout Canada...

, who had developed a reputation for driving a hard bargain, but sticking honestly to what they agreed to, and for treating Whites and Indians impartially. This continued through the dealings of the local Bureau of Indian Affairs

Bureau of Indian Affairs

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is an agency of the federal government of the United States within the US Department of the Interior. It is responsible for the administration and management of of land held in trust by the United States for Native Americans in the United States, Native American...

Superintendent General, Joel Palmer

Joel Palmer

General Joel Palmer was an American pioneer of the Oregon Territory in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. He was born in Canada, and spent his early years in New York and Pennsylvania before serving as a member of the Indiana House of Representatives.Palmer traveled to the Oregon...

, who (along with Maynard's brother-in-law, Indian Agent Mike Simmons) was among the few even-handed men in the BIA.

Consequently when Stevens, in drafting treaties, acted in a manner that Judge James Wickerson would characterize forty years later as "unfair, unjust, ungenerous, and illegal", some natives, quite unprepared for such behavior by the official representatives of the white man's power, were angered to the point of war. The unjust and deliberately confusing Western Washington treaties such as that of Medicine Creek (December 26, 1854) and Point Elliott

Treaty of Point Elliott

The Treaty of Point Elliott of 1855, or the Point Elliott Treaty,—also known as Treaty of Point Elliot / Point Elliott Treaty—is the lands settlement treaty between the United States government and the nominal Native American tribes of the greater Puget Sound region in the recently-formed...

(now Mukilteo

Mukilteo, Washington

Mukilteo , which means "good camping ground", is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. The population was 20,254 at the 2010 census. It is on the shore of the Puget Sound, and is the site of a Washington State Ferries terminal linking it to Clinton, on Whidbey Island.Mukilteo is...

) (January 22, 1855) were followed by the yet more provocative treaty of Walla Walla

Walla Walla, Washington

Walla Walla is the largest city in and the county seat of Walla Walla County, Washington, United States. The population was 31,731 at the 2010 census...

(May 21, 1855), as Stevens pointedly ignored federal government instructions to stick to sorting out the areas where natives and settlers found themselves immediately adjacent to one another, or, from the other perspective, where settlers moved right in on Native places.

Generally after the Point Elliott Treaty

By the time of the Treaty of Point Elliott

Treaty of Point Elliott

, Maynard had already made an ally of Chief Seattle by arranging to have him somewhat compensated for the use of his name for the new town. Chief Seattle's ancestral religion and Coast Salish

Coast Salish

culture have beliefs opposed to speaking or using a person's name after that person's death and prior to protocols, so this was not a simple matter, although Chief Seattle soon converted to a somewhat eclectic Roman Catholicism. (See also Duwamish). At Point Elliott, Maynard cemented this alliance (and greatly benefited his emerging town) by getting Chief Seattle and the Duwamish a separate, more favorable treaty, which, in exchange for a relatively large reservation (promised, not yet ever fulfilled), Natives abandoned all aboriginal title to 54,790 acres (221.7 km²), constituting an area almost identical to the eventual twentieth-century city limits of the City of Seattle, for nearly nothing at the time.

With Stevens in Eastern Washington sowing discord, Secretary of State Charles Mason was left in charge of the state government. Yakama

Yakama

The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, or simply Yakama Nation , is a Native American group with nearly 10,000 enrolled members, living in Washington. Their reservation, along the Yakima River, covers an area of approximately 1.2 million acres...

Chief Kamiakim had effectively declared war and told nations such as the Duwamish that they could either join him or would be treated as enemies. By autumn, there had been an exchange of massacres by Whites and settlers, in which both sides seemed ready to kill whichever people of the other race were at hand, with no regard for whether these particular individuals had in any way previously wronged them. (This cycle of retaliatory violence would reach its logical conclusion two years after the war, when the brilliant and generally respected si'ab Lescay (Chief Leschi

Chief Leschi

Chief Leschi was chief of the Nisqually Native American tribe. He was hanged for murder in 1858, but exonerated in 2004.-Life:...

) was tried and condemned to death for a murder he almost certainly did not commit, and hanged before his appeal could be properly heard.)

Maynard got Mike Simmons to deputize him as a Special Indian Agent, then—in a complex, multi-way transaction—cemented a relationship with acting governor Mason and some other key figures by selling them some prime Seattle real estate at a good price. He then used the money from the transaction to buy supplies and a boat to ferry Chief Seattle and his Duwamish to what was effectively a privately-funded reservation at Port Madison, west of Puget Sound. He also, at enormous personal risk, spent the first several weeks of November 1855 traveling around eastern King County, which was already penetrated by some of Kamiakim's men, informing several hundred other neutral natives that there was a safe place they could go. Most of them took him up on it. Induced fear effected abandonment of places Natives were otherwise loath to leave.

(In Doc Maynard, Bill Speidel reports that not all of the Seattle businessmen were pleased with his getting the local Indians out of the way. Henry Yesler and others found themselves deprived of much of their labor force and wrote letters of protest to the territorial government.)

Shortly before Stevens returned to Olympia January 16, 1856, Captain E.D. Keyes had managed an uneasy informal truce by communicating with, among others, Chief Leschi. Stevens promptly undercut the truce, saying of the natives, "Nothing but death is mete punishment for their perfidy."

On January 25, 1856, Stevens announced, "The town of Seattle is in as much danger of an Indian attack as are the cities of San Francisco or New York."

On January 26, 1856, natives attacked the Seattle settlement

Battle of Seattle (1856)

The Battle of Seattle was a January 26, 1856 attack by native Americans upon Seattle, Washington. At the time, Seattle was a settlement in the Washington Territory that had recently named itself after Chief Seattle , a leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish peoples of central Puget Sound.Backed by...

. Friendly Indians permitted to stay in Seattle had warned the Whites, and sentries had been put on patrol. In the morning, acting on tip, a shell was lobbed into the forest above the town, what is now First Hill

First Hill, Seattle, Washington

. First fire. The Indians fired back, small arms. Settlers rushed from their cabins to the blockhouse

Blockhouse

In military science, a blockhouse is a small, isolated fort in the form of a single building. It serves as a defensive strong point against any enemy that does not possess siege equipment or, in modern times, artillery...

. The defenses were based on a large wooden blockhouse

Blockhouse

, a five-foot-high wood-and-earth breastworks, various ravines—and the cannon just offshore zeroed (bearing and range laid in). The settlement was defended at the time by the 150 man, 566 ton, 16 gun sloop-of-war

Sloop-of-war

In the 18th and most of the 19th centuries, a sloop-of-war was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. As the rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above, this meant that the term sloop-of-war actually encompassed all the unrated combat vessels including the...

Decatur

USS Decatur (1839)

USS Decatur was a sloop-of-war in the United States Navy during the mid-19th century. She was commissioned to protect American interests in the South Atlantic Ocean, including the interception of ships involved in the African slave trade...

, the bark

Barque

A barque, barc, or bark is a type of sailing vessel with three or more masts.- History of the term :The word barque appears to have come from the Greek word baris, a term for an Egyptian boat. This entered Latin as barca, which gave rise to the Italian barca, Spanish barco, and the French barge and...

Bronte, seven out-of-town civilian volunteers, fifty local volunteers, and at least 6 Marines from the Decatur The number of attackers is impossible to establish: estimates range from a mere thirty to 2000 with more than a hundred killed, another hundred wounded. Not so much as a single Indian body was ever found, not even a sign of blood. The Indians had made no attempt to storm the stockade. No one in the blockhouse was much interested in venturing out on attack. Both sides had paused for dinner. There were two known fatalities: a young volunteer and a 14-year-old boy, both of whom had neglected to stay behind cover. No one who kept inside the stockade was wounded. A few things do seem clear in this fog of war: nearly all of the local volunteers hardly left the blockhouse, the Navy took no combat casualties in this land battle, and Kamiakim's forces were successfully driven off, but also took few (if any) fatalities. Still, they seem to have drawn the conclusion that attacking a major settlement wasn't worth the trouble. The only remaining major battle of the war was to occur March 10 at Connell's Prairie near Puyallup

Puyallup, Washington

Puyallup, Washington is a city in Pierce County, Washington about five miles east of Tacoma. The population was 37,022 at the 2010 Census. Named after the Puyallup Tribe of Native Americans, Puyallup means "the generous people."-History:...

After the skirmish "Battle of Seattle"

The cessation of general hostilities did not diminish Stevens' crusading zeal against the natives. He encouraged fratricidal war by offering the "good Indians" a bounty for scalps of the "bad Indians". The largest collector of such rewards was Chief Seattle's sworn rival, Chief Patkanim

Patkanim

Patkanim was chief of the Snoqualmoo and Snohomish tribe in what is now modern Washington State....

, a leader among the Snoqualmie

Snoqualmie (tribe)

The Snoqualmie Tribe is a tribal government of Coast Salish Native American peoples from the Snoqualmie Valley in east King and Snohomish Counties in Washington state. The Snoqualmie settled onto the Tulalip Reservation after signing the Point Elliott Treaty with the Washington Territory in 1855...

and Snohomish

Snohomish (tribe)

The Snohomish are a Lushootseed Native American tribe who reside around the Puget Sound area of Washington, north of Seattle. They speak the Lushootseed language. The tribal spelling is Sdoh-doh-hohbsh, which means "wet snow" according to the last chief of the Snohomish tribe, Chief William...

. According to Speidel, Patkanim was not above killing and scalping his own slaves as a means of generating income. Speidel also narrates (in Sons of the Profits) that on one occasion this led to a native being killed and scalped in Stevens' own office.

Stevens continually attempted to recruit Chief Seattle and the Duwamish to this cause. Maynard and Chief Seattle, who had already gone to great lengths to help keep the Duwamish at a safe distance from Patkanim, never actually refused the Governor's request, but instead maintained a successful pattern of stalling and passive resistance to avoid ever providing any Duwamish fighters to further Stevens' scheme.

A smallpox

Smallpox

Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...

epidemic broke out among the Northwest tribes in 1862, killing roughly half of the native population. Documentation in archives and historical epidemiology demonstrates that Governmental policies furthered the progress of the epidemic among the natives.

The Seattle Establishment, including 'Doc' Maynard, petitioned the Territorial Delegate to Congress in 1866 to deny treaty rights to the Duwamish. The commitments made by the United States government in the Point Elliott Treaty have not yet been met.

Yesler's Mill

At first, Alki was larger than Seattle. "It was platted into six blocks of eight lots... and most of them had buildings on them that were in use. There weren't eight level, usable blocks in all of Seattle." However, when Henry Yesler brought
"financial backing from a Massillon, Ohio

Massillon, Ohio

Massillon is a city located in Stark County in the U.S. state of Ohio, approximately 8 miles to the west of Canton, Ohio, 20 miles south of Akron, Ohio, and 50 miles south of Cleveland, Ohio. The population was 32,149 at the 2010 census....

capitalist, John E. McLain, to start a steam sawmill

Sawmill

A sawmill is a facility where logs are cut into boards.-Sawmill process:A sawmill's basic operation is much like those of hundreds of years ago; a log enters on one end and dimensional lumber exits on the other end....

once he had isolated the perfect location for such a structure," he chose a Seattle location, on the waterfront where Maynard and Denny's plats met. Thereafter, Seattle would dominate the lumber industry.

Yesler selected this location because of a critical flaw with Alki as a port: "During the winter, the north wind, building up the tides in front of it, comes sweeping down the Sound out of Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, piling mighty waves on Alki Point. Beginning with Terry... nobody has been able to build anything out in the water at Alki that will withstand those waves."

The road leading down the hill to that mill, later called Mill Street and now known as Yesler Way, was originally known as the Skid Road, the route for skidding logs down to the mill, hence the term "Skid Road" or corrupted as "Skid Row

Skid row

A skid row or skid road is a run-down or dilapidated urban area with a large, impoverished population. The term originally referred literally to a path along which working men skidded logs. Its current sense appears to have originated in the Pacific Northwest...

" for a rundown or dilapidated urban area as the mill declined and the area collapsed with the Crash and Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

.

Via the bargaining power of his mill, Yesler wrangled about 20,220 square feet (1,900 m²) of prime land from some of the original settlers. Besides his mill, Yesler started a cookhouse that "did more to 'set' the heart of the city in the middle of Yesler's property holdings than anything else Henry did. Henry never did make a lot of money out of his mill. It was the strategic location of his land that made him a millionaire." Like many of Seattle's early entrepreneurs, Yesler was not always the most scrupulous about how he made his money; he borrowed $30,000 at 8% interest to build the mill, and repaid McLain only after McLain took Yesler to court three times.

A city grows

The first Seattle fortunes were founded on logs, and later milled timber, shipped south for the construction of buildings in San Francisco. Seattle itself, in the early years, was, of course, also a place of wooden buildings, and remained so until the Great Fire of June 6, 1889. Even the early system of delivering water to the settlement used hollowed-out logs for pipes. Seattle in its early years relied on the timber industry, shipping logs (and, later, milled timber) to San Francisco.

Terry sold out Alki (which, after his departure barely held on as a settlement), moved to Seattle and began acquiring land. He either owned or partially owned the first ships that allowed Seattle's timber industry to exist by providing a means to move the product to market. He eventually gave a land grant to the University of the Territory of Washington that housed its original campus and today makes the University of Washington

University of Washington

University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...

a downtown landlord collecting rents of more than $1 million a year. He worked in politics to establish street grades, a water system, and a host of other services (which, not coincidentally, benefited him as one of the city's largest landholders).

Meanwhile, Arthur Denny became the second richest man in town, after Yesler, and got himself elected to territorial legislature. From that position, he tried unsuccessfully to get the territorial capital moved to Seattle from its then supposedly temporary location in Olympia

Olympia, Washington

Olympia is the capital city of the U.S. state of Washington and the county seat of Thurston County. It was incorporated on January 28, 1859. The population was 46,478 at the 2010 census...

. The other potential money prizes were the territorial penitentiary and the territorial university. When the politics all played out, Vancouver

Vancouver, Washington

Vancouver is a city on the north bank of the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington. Incorporated in 1857, it is the fourth largest city in the state with a 2010 census population of 161,791 as of April 1, 2010...

wound up as the proposed capital, Port Townsend

Port Townsend, Washington

Port Townsend is a city in Jefferson County, Washington, United States, approximately north-northwest of Seattle . The population was 9,113 at the 2010 census an increase of 9.3% over the 2000 census. It is the county seat and only incorporated city of Jefferson County...

was supposed to get the penitentiary, and Seattle got the university. Apparently, Seattle was the only real winner in this deal: to this day, Olympia remains the capital of Washington; the main state penitentiary is in Walla Walla

Walla Walla, Washington

Walla Walla is the largest city in and the county seat of Walla Walla County, Washington, United States. The population was 31,731 at the 2010 census...

.

The legislature had tacked on the requirement that a grant of 10 acres (4 ha) of land would be required for the university to be built, which they presumably thought would be sufficient to prevent its construction. However, Denny wanted his town to grow and donated the land, creating what would be "one of the biggest and most effective central core properties in the United States." The University of the Territory of Washington (later the University of Washington

University of Washington

) opened on November 4, 1861. There were barely enough students to run it as a high school, let alone as a university, but over time it grew into its originally grandiose name.

The logging town developed rapidly into a small city. Despite being officially founded by the Methodists of the Denny Party, Seattle quickly developed a reputation as a wide-open town, a haven for prostitution

Prostitution

, liquor, and gambling

Gambling

Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods...

. Some attribute this, at least in part, to Maynard, who arrived separately from the Denny Party, and who had a rather different view of what it would take to build a city, based on his experience in growing Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

. By selling some of his land cheaply on condition that businesses be soon built upon them, he recruited professionals, such as blacksmiths and purveyors of vice, who enhanced the value of his remaining land. The city's first brothel dated from 1861 and was founded by one John Pinnell (or Pennell), who was already involved in similar business in San Francisco. Real estate

Real estate

In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...

records show that nearly all of the city's first 60 businesses were on, or immediately adjacent to, Maynard's plat.

Seattle was incorporated as a town January 14, 1865. The incorporators were Charles C. Terry, Henry L. Yesler, David T. Denny, Charles Plummer

Charles Plummer

Charles Plummer was an English historian, best known for editing Sir John Fortescue's The Governance of England, and for coining the term 'bastard feudalism'....

and Hiram Burnett

Hiram Burnett

-Intro:Hiram Burnett, one of the well-known pioneers of the Puget Sound country, and an honored citizen of Seattle, was born at Southborough, Massachusetts, July 5, 1817. He died in Seattle, Washington 1906...

, an officer of the largest Puget Sound lumber company Pope & Talbot. That charter was voided January 18, 1867, in response to unrest. Seattle was re-incorporated as a city on December 2, 1869. At the times of incorporation, the population was approximately 350 and 1,000, respectively.

Railroad rivalry and encroaching civilization

On July 14, 1873 the Northern Pacific Railway

Northern Pacific Railway

The Northern Pacific Railway was a railway that operated in the west along the Canadian border of the United States. Construction began in 1870 and the main line opened all the way from the Great Lakes to the Pacific when former president Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final "golden spike" in...

announced that they had chosen the then-small town of Tacoma

Tacoma, Washington

Tacoma is a mid-sized urban port city and the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. The city is on Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Park. The population was 198,397, according to...

over Seattle as the Western terminus of their transcontinental railroad. The railroad barons appear to have been gambling on the advantage they could gain from being able to buy up the land around their terminus cheaply instead of bringing the railroad into a more established Pacific port town.

Unwilling to be bypassed, the citizens of Seattle chartered their own railroad, the Seattle & Walla Walla

Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad

The Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad was the first railroad in Seattle, Washington...

. This project did not get very far, though after later reorganization it did bring coal, fueling industry in Seattle. The later Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railway was only moderately more successful, although it did provide a route for logs to come to the city from as far away as Arlington, Washington

Arlington, Washington

Arlington is a city in northern Snohomish County, Washington, United States, bordered by the city of Marysville to the south. The population was 17,926 at the 2010 census.-History:...

, boost development of towns, and help Seattle hit the jackpot with the Northern Pacific. The Great Northern Railway did finally come to Seattle in 1884, winning Seattle a place in competition for freight, though it would be 1906 before Seattle finally acquired a major rail passenger terminal. The Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern was, over the years, incorporated into the Northern Pacific and then the Burlington Northern railways. The line was abandoned as a railroad in 1971 with the general decline in rail, and became in 1978 a foot and bicycle route renamed the Burke-Gilman Trail

Burke-Gilman Trail

The Burke-Gilman Sammamish Trail is a rail trail in King County, Washington. The multi-use recreational trail is part of the King County Regional Trail System and occupies an abandoned Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway corridor....

, then gradually greatly extended.
As has been remarked, Seattle in this era was an "open" and often relatively lawless town. Although it boasted two English-language newspaper

Newspaper

A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...

s (and, for a while, a third in Norwegian

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

), and telephone

Telephone

The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...

s had arrived in town, lynch law sometimes prevailed (there were at least four lynching

Lynching

Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...

s in 1882), school

School

A school is an institution designed for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is commonly compulsory. In these systems, students progress through a series of schools...

s barely operated, and indoor plumbing

Plumbing

Plumbing is the system of pipes and drains installed in a building for the distribution of potable drinking water and the removal of waterborne wastes, and the skilled trade of working with pipes, tubing and plumbing fixtures in such systems. A plumber is someone who installs or repairs piping...

was a rare novelty. In the low mud flats where much of the city was built, sewage

Sewage

Sewage is water-carried waste, in solution or suspension, that is intended to be removed from a community. Also known as wastewater, it is more than 99% water and is characterized by volume or rate of flow, physical condition, chemical constituents and the bacteriological organisms that it contains...

was almost as likely to come in on the tide

Tide

Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the moon and the sun and the rotation of the Earth....

as to flow away. Potholes in the street were so bad that legend has it there was at least one fatal drowning

Drowning

Drowning is death from asphyxia due to suffocation caused by water entering the lungs and preventing the absorption of oxygen leading to cerebral hypoxia....

.

The 1882 lynchings are well described in Murray Morgan's book Skid Road. The events involved a mob defying an armed sheriff, successfully disarming the sheriff's deputies, and assaulting Judge Roger Sherman Greene, who attempted to slash the ropes by which the lynching victims were to be hanged. Judge Greene, while not doubting the actual guilt of the lynched men, was later to write that "the lynchers were co-criminal with the lynched."

In an era during which the Washington Territory was one of the first parts of the U.S. to (briefly) allow women's suffrage

Women's suffrage

Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...

, Seattle women attempted to counter these trends and to be a civilizing influence. On April 4, 1884, 15 Seattle women founded The Ladies Relief Society to address "the number of needy and suffering cases within the limits of the city." This eventually resulted in the founding of the Seattle Children's Home, still in operation today.

Other signs of encroaching civilization were the city's first bathtub with plumbing 1870, and first streetcar in 1884, followed by a cable car from downtown over First Hill to Leschi Park

Leschi Park (Seattle)

Leschi Park is an 18.5 acre park in the Leschi neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, named after Chief Leschi of the Nisqually tribe. The majority of the park is a grassy hillside that lies west of Lakeside Avenue S...

in 1887. In 1885, the city passed an ordinance requiring attached sewer

Sanitary sewer

A sanitary sewer is a separate underground carriage system specifically for transporting sewage from houses and commercial buildings to treatment or disposal. Sanitary sewers serving industrial areas also carry industrial wastewater...

lines for all new residences. In 1886, the city got its first YMCA

YMCA

The Young Men's Christian Association is a worldwide organization of more than 45 million members from 125 national federations affiliated through the World Alliance of YMCAs...

gymnasium, and in 1888 the exclusive Rainier Club

Rainier Club

The Rainier Club is a private club in Seattle, Washington; Priscilla Long of HistoryLink.org calls it "Seattle's preeminent private club." Its clubhouse building, completed in 1904, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was founded in 1888 in what was then the Washington Territory...

was founded. On December 24, 1888, ferry

Ferry

A ferry is a form of transportation, usually a boat, but sometimes a ship, used to carry primarily passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo as well, across a body of water. Most ferries operate on regular, frequent, return services...

service was inaugurated, connecting Seattle to West Seattle

West Seattle, Seattle, Washington

West Seattle comprises two of Seattle, Washington's thirteen districts, Delridge and Southwest and encompasses all of Seattle west of the Duwamish River. It was incorporated as an independent town in 1902 and was annexed by Seattle in 1907. Among the area's attractions are its saltwater beach parks...

, near the location of the Denny Party's first attempt at settling at Alki and reviving that settlement. A year later, a bridge was built across Salmon Bay

Salmon Bay

, providing a land route to the nearby town of Ballard

Ballard, Seattle, Washington

Ballard is a neighborhood located in the northwestern part of Seattle, Washington. To the north it is bounded by Crown Hill, ; to the east by Greenwood, Phinney Ridge and Fremont ; to the south by the Lake Washington Ship Canal; and to the west by Puget Sound’s Shilshole Bay. The neighborhood’s...

, which after 17 years would be annexed to Seattle.

The relative fortunes of Seattle and Tacoma clearly show the nature of Seattle's growth. Though both Seattle and Tacoma grew at a rapid rate from 1880 to 1890, based on the strength of their timber industries, Seattle's growth as an exporter of services and manufactured goods continued for another two decades, while Tacoma's growth dropped almost to zero. The reason for this lies in Tacoma's nature as a company town and Seattle's successful avoidance of that condition.

Both Seattle and Tacoma in the 1880s were essentially lumber towns, built on the resulting export income. All over the Puget Sound there are communities that started with the same assets, timber and a port. However, Seattle's early lead with Yesler's mill and other enterprises meant that its economy was based on manufacturing as well as lumber, and was thus far more diversified than Tacoma's. The Northern Pacific Railway terminus only increased Tacoma's lumber trade instead of diversifying the economy. Meanwhile, Seattle became the hub for the region and the railroad had to come.

Relations between whites and Chinese

Chinese first arrived in Seattle around 1860. The Northern Pacific Railway completed the project of laying tracks from Lake Superior

Lake Superior

Lake Superior is the largest of the five traditionally-demarcated Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded to the north by the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of Minnesota, and to the south by the U.S. states of Wisconsin and Michigan. It is the largest freshwater lake in the...

to Tacoma, Washington

Tacoma, Washington

, in 1883, leaving many Chinese laborers without employment. In 1883, Chinese laborers played a key role in the first effort at digging the Montlake Cut

Montlake Cut

The Montlake Cut is the easternmost section of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, which passes through the city of Seattle, linking Lake Washington to Puget Sound. It is approximately long and wide. The center channel is wide and deep....

to connect Lake Union

Lake Union

Lake Union is a freshwater lake entirely within the Seattle, Washington city limits.-Origins:A glacial lake, its basin was dug 12,000 years ago by the Vashon glacier, which also created Lake Washington and Seattle's Green, Bitter, and Haller Lakes.-Name:...

's Portage Bay

Portage Bay

to Lake Washington

Lake Washington

's Union Bay.

Seattle's Chinese district, located near the present day Occidental Park, was a mixed neighborhood of residences over stores, laundries, and other retail storefronts. In fall 1885, with a shortage of jobs in the West, many workers turned violently anti-Chinese, complaining of overly cheap labor competition. In the Pacific Northwest, this had the unusual character that the anti-Chinese mobs included significant numbers of the native Indians as well as European-Americans.

The first massacre of Chinese occurred at Rock Springs, Wyoming

Rock Springs, Wyoming

Rock Springs is a city in Sweetwater County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 18,708 at the 2000 census. Rock Springs is the principal city of the Rock Springs micropolitan statistical area, which has a population of 37,975....

, September 2, 1885. On September 7, Chinese hop

Hops

Hops are the female flower clusters , of a hop species, Humulus lupulus. They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, to which they impart a bitter, tangy flavor, though hops are also used for various purposes in other beverages and herbal medicine...

-pickers were massacred in the Squak valley near present-day Issaquah

Issaquah, Washington

Issaquah is a city in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 30,434 at the 2010 census.Based on per capita income, Issaquah ranks 25th of 522 areas in the State of Washington to be ranked....

. Similar incidents occurred in the nearby mining camps at Coal Creek

Coal Creek (Washington)

Coal Creek is a creek in Newcastle, Washington, on Seattle's Eastside. It is named for the coal mining industry prominent in the area in the 19th century. There is a popular trail which parallels the creek, allowing views of defunct coal mining equipment and even some bits of coal sitting on the...

and Black Diamond

Black Diamond, Washington

Black Diamond is a city in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 4,151 at the 2010 census.Based on per capita income, one of the more reliable measures of affluence, Black Diamond ranks 64th of 522 areas in the state of Washington to be ranked.-History:Black Diamond was...

. Many Chinese headed from these isolated rural areas into the cities, but it did them little good: on October 24, a mob burned a large portion of Seattle’s Chinatown; on November 3, a mob of 300 expelled the Chinese in Tacoma

Tacoma, Washington

(loading them into boxcars with surprisingly little actual violence) before moving on to force similar expulsions in smaller towns.

Violent opposition to the Chinese at this time was inseparable from labor union organizing. The pro-labor Seattle Call routinely described the Chinese in brutally racist terms; leading figures in the anti-Chinese movement included Knights of Labor

Knights of Labor

The Knights of Labor was the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s. Its most important leader was Terence Powderly...

organizer Dan Cronin and Seattle socialist

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

agitator Mary Kenworthy; the utopian socialist

Utopian socialism

Utopian socialism is a term used to define the first currents of modern socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen which inspired Karl Marx and other early socialists and were looked on favorably...

George Venable Smith was also of this party. Nor did the Chinese have many strong defenders among the wealthier classes, who, however, mostly favored a more orderly departure of the Chinese to massacre and riot (the policy of Henry Yesler, who was serving as mayor at this time).
Among the few defenders of the rule of law were the Methodist Episcopal Ministers' Association and Judge Thomas Burke. Burke, an Irish

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

immigrant and generally a friend of labor, was nonetheless a stronger defender of the Constitution

United States Constitution

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...

; he also spoke out that his fellow Irish should identify with the Chinese as fellow immigrants, a view which fell almost entirely on deaf ears.

On February 7, 1886, well-organized anti-Chinese "order committees" descended on Seattle's Chinatown, claiming to be health inspectors, declaring Chinese-occupied buildings to be unfit for habitation, rousting out the residents and herding them down to the harbor, where the Queen of the Pacific was docked. The police were willing to intervene only to the point of preventing the Chinese from being physically harmed, not to challenging the mob. It is quite probable that if ship's captain Jack Alexander had been willing simply to board the Chinese and take them away, the mob would entirely have ruled the day; however, he was not in the business of hauling non-paying passengers. The mob raised several hundred dollars, 86 Chinese were boarded, but this delay gave the mayor, Judge Burke, the U.S. Attorney, and others time both to rally the Home Guard and to serve Alexander with a writ of habeas corpus. A plot to deport the Chinese by rail was foiled when Sheriff McGraw threatened to prosecute the railroad superintendent for kidnapping.

The following day, Judge Greene made it clear that those Chinese who wished to remain would be protected, but by now, after what they had been through, all but sixteen preferred to leave. Alexander, by now, "was anxious to keep his operations strictly legal", and would board only the 196 passengers for which his ship was rated, slightly more than half of the Chinese who were ready to leave. Possibly due to poor communication, the anti-Chinese faction were unsatisfied; a resulting scuffle resulted in one dead and four others wounded among the anti-Chinese faction, and martial law was imposed. Ultimately, the bulk of the Chinese remained in Seattle, and the U.S. government "out of humane consideration and without reference to liability" paid out $276,619.15 to the Chinese government, but nothing to the victims themselves.

The Great Seattle Fire

The early Seattle era came to a stunning halt with the Great Seattle Fire

Great Seattle Fire

The Great Seattle Fire was a fire that destroyed the entire central business district of Seattle, Washington, USA, on June 6, 1889.-Early Seattle:In the fall of 1851, the Denny Party arrived at Alki Point in what is now the state of Washington...

of June 6, 1889. It burned 29 city blocks, destroying most of the central business district; no one, however, perished in the flames, and the city quickly rebounded from the destruction. Thanks in part to credit arranged by Jacob Furth

Jacob Furth

Jacob Furth was an Austrian Empire-born American entrepreneur and prominent Seattle banker. He played a key role in consolidating Seattle's electric power and public transportation infrastructure, and was a member of Ohaveth Sholum Congregation, Seattle's first synagogue...

(as well as, according to Speidel, brothel-owner Lou Graham

Lou Graham (Seattle madame)

Lou Graham , born Dorothea Georgine Emile Ohben, was a German-born woman who became famous as the madame of a brothel in what is now the Pioneer Square district of Seattle, Washington, USA...

), Seattle rebuilt from the ashes with astounding rapidity. A new zoning

Zoning

Zoning is a device of land use planning used by local governments in most developed countries. The word is derived from the practice of designating permitted uses of land based on mapped zones which separate one set of land uses from another...

code resulted in a downtown of brick and stone

Rock (geology)

In geology, rock or stone is a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids.The Earth's outer solid layer, the lithosphere, is made of rock. In general rocks are of three types, namely, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic...

buildings, rather than wood. In the single year after the fire, the city grew from 25,000 to 40,000 inhabitants, largely because of the enormous number of construction jobs suddenly created.

Labor history in 19th century Seattle

The Pacific Northwest economy during the nineteenth century was heavily rooted in extractive industries, mainly logging. Still, Seattle was becoming a city, and union

Trade union

A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...

organizing arrived first in the form of a skilled craft union. In 1882, Seattle printers formed the Seattle Typographical Union Local 202. Dockworkers followed in 1886, cigar

Cigar

A cigar is a tightly-rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco that is ignited so that its smoke may be drawn into the mouth. Cigar tobacco is grown in significant quantities in Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Philippines, and the Eastern...

makers in 1887, tailors in 1889, and both brewers and musicians in 1890. Even the newsboys unionized in 1892, followed by more organizing, mostly of craft unions.

According to various analyses and as evident through general readings in news coverage of the time, the history of labor in this period is inseparable from the issue of anti-Chinese vigilantism, as discussed above. A rough-and-ready approach to labor organizing was typical of the period, and there is no question that white Seattle-area laborers at this time saw cheap Chinese labor as their prime competition and strove to eliminate it by eliminating the Chinese immigrants.

This section is still mostly a stub. You can help Wikipedia by fixing it.

The Klondike Gold Rush

Seattle, as well as the rest of the nation, was hard hit by the Panic of 1893

Panic of 1893

The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States that began in 1893. Similar to the Panic of 1873, this panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures...

, and to a lesser extent, the Panic of 1896

Panic of 1896

The Panic of 1896 was an acute economic depression in the United States that was less serious than other panics of the era precipitated by a drop in silver reserves and market concerns on the effects it would have on the gold standard. Deflation of commodities prices drove the stock market to new...

. Unlike many other cities, it soon found salvation in the form of becoming the main transportation and supply center for stampeders heading for the Klondike gold rush

Klondike Gold Rush

The Klondike Gold Rush, also called the Yukon Gold Rush, the Alaska Gold Rush and the Last Great Gold Rush, was an attempt by an estimated 100,000 people to travel to the Klondike region the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1897 and 1899 in the hope of successfully prospecting for gold...

. When the steamer S.S. Portland arrived at Schwabacher's Wharf in Seattle July 17, 1897, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is an online newspaper and former print newspaper covering Seattle, Washington, United States, and the surrounding metropolitan area...

scooped all other U.S. newspapers with the story that a "ton of gold

Gold

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...

" had arrived from Alaska

Alaska

Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

. A publicity campaign engineered largely by Erastus Brainerd

Erastus Brainerd

Erastus Brainerd was an American journalist and art museum curator. During the Yukon Gold Rush, he was the publicist who "sold the idea that Seattle was the Gateway to Alaska and the only such portal"....

successfully convinced the world that Seattle was the place to outfit yourself for the journey to Alaska, and Seattle became a household word, literally overnight. The miners

Mining

Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...

mined the gold. Seattle mined the miners.

Seattle's relationship with Alaska during this period was generally one of rapacity. Besides the mining, on October 18, 1899, a Chamber of Commerce "Committee of Fifteen," just back from a goodwill visit to Alaska, proudly unveiled a 60 feet (18.3 m) totem pole

Totem pole

Totem poles are monumental sculptures carved from large trees, mostly Western Red Cedar, by cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America...

from Fort Tongass, Alaska in Pioneer Square. The problem was, the pole had been stolen from the Tlingit village of Gaash on Cape Fox. A federal grand jury in Alaska indicted eight of Seattle's most prominent citizens for theft

Theft

In common usage, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent. The word is also used as an informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, shoplifting and fraud...

of government property. A nominal fine was assessed The village was repaid when the original burned and the Chamber of Commerce commissioned a replacement—and paid twice. "Thank you for the check", wrote the Gaash village leaders. "That was payment for the first one. Send another check for the replacement."

Introduction

Founding

Relations with the natives

Generally before the Point Elliott Treaty

Generally after the Point Elliott Treaty

After the skirmish "Battle of Seattle"

Yesler's Mill

A city grows

Railroad rivalry and encroaching civilization

Relations between whites and Chinese

The Great Seattle Fire

Labor history in 19th century Seattle

The Klondike Gold Rush

Further reading