Among the Indians of the Pacific Northwest, perhaps none is as well known as Chief Seattle, who left the earth 130 years ago. Called Sealth by his native Suquamish tribe, the chief’s fame largely rests upon a speech made popular during the heady days of the 1970s. It includes such inspiring lines as: ‘Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. As early as 1975, the authenticity of these words was questioned. Although Sealth was an eloquent speaker, could his famous words belong to someone else?

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What we know of Sealth (pronounced SEE-elth, with a guttural stop at the end) and his life is mostly conjecture based upon myth with a little bit of extrapolated fact. That he was a tyee, or chief, has never been disputed. His father, Schweabe, had been a tyee, and the title was hereditary, though it conferred no power upon the holder. The Suquamish listened to the tyee only when he said what the people wanted to hear. The remainder of the time, a tyee was expected to share his largess with the rest of the tribe during a potlatch.

In 1792, Captain George Vancouver anchored off Restoration Point on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound. Sealth, according to the recollections of various old-timers, often spoke of seeing the ship and being impressed with the guns, steel and other goods. Judging from these accounts, he must have been about 6 at the time. Vancouver was not impressed, writing in his log that the village was the most lowly and meanest of its kind. The best of the huts were poor and miserable, and the people were busily engaged like swine, rooting up this beautiful meadow.

As a young adult, Sealth made his mark as a warrior, orator and diplomat. He worked to increase cooperation within the 42 recognized divisions of Salish people occupying Puget Sound, including his own Suquamish. In later years it was remembered that the old chief had a resonant voice that carried half a mile and that eloquent sentences rolled from his lips like the ceaseless thunders of cataracts flowing from exhaustless fountains.

In 1832, he impressed the Hudson’s Bay factor at Nisqually, Dr. Fraser Tolmie. The handsomest Indian I have ever seen, said Tolmie. In 1838, Sealth was baptized Noah by Father Modest Demers. One wonders if the tyee saw this as one practical way to ascend to the white man’s affluence. When the Denny-Boren party landed in 1851 to found their town on Puget Sound, Sealth was there to encourage the construction of a trading post.

The post failed, but then Dr. David (Doc) Maynard entered the picture in 1855. Maynard had left his wife of 20 years in Ohio to come west and make his fortune. Doc was a dreamer, and he saw dollar signs on the shores of Puget Sound. No sooner had he filed on a large piece of property, next to the Dennys and Borens, than he began to give it away to encourage growth. He opened a trading post along the shores of the Duwamish River, and one of his best customers was Sealth. They became such good friends that Doc named the new city after him, Seattle being as close a pronunciation as most white tongues would allow. The tyee was less than pleased with the distinction, convinced as he was that, after dying, every time Seattle was spoken he would turn in his grave.

The 1850s were a turning point for the Salish peoples in and around Puget Sound. As more and more settlers moved into the country, aggressively displacing the Salish, discontent rose within the various tribes. With the discontent came acts of violence on both sides, with the Salish increasingly on the losing end. In 1853, Washington Territorial Governor Issac Stevens, a man who believed in the late 19th-century philosophy of the only good Indian is a dead Indian, began buying up or seizing Salish lands and removing the tribes to reservations. In December 1854, the governor visited Seattle, and Tyee Sealth made a speech lamenting that the day of the Indian had passed and the future belonged to the white man. On hand to take notes was Dr. Henry J. Smith, a surgeon with a penchant for florid Victorian poetry (his pen name was Paul Garland).

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