page_title: Battle of Seattle (1856)
section_title: Terrain
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Seattle (1856) / Terrain
caption_attribution_description: English: Text engraved on plaque: Site of the blockhouse fort to protect the whites in the Indian War of 1855 A stockade stretched from here to the smaller fort at the intersection on Main Street and Occidental Avenue. This tablet was erected by the Washington University State Historical Society.... November 13, 1905. Eagle Brass Fdy Seattle . Caption on image: 343. Peiser . Peiser 343 Subjects (LCTGM): Plaques--Washington (State)--Seattle; Historical markers--Washington (State)--Seattle
context_page_description: The Battle of Seattle was a January 26, 1856 attack by Native American tribesmen 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.
  European-American settlers were backed by artillery fire and supported by Marines from the United States Navy sloop-of-war Decatur, anchored in Elliott Bay. They suffered two fatalities. It is not known if any of the Native American raiders died. The contemporary historian T. S. Phelps wrote that they later "would admit" to 28 dead and 80 wounded. The battle, part of the multi-year Puget Sound War or Yakima Wars, lasted a single day.
context_section_description: The Seattle settlement of the time was located roughly in the area of Seattle's Pioneer Square and its neighborhood. T. S. Phelps's memoir of the time described the settlement as:
  …on a point, or rather a small peninsula, projecting from the eastern shore, and about two miles (3 km) from the mouth of Duwam-sh River, debouching at the head of the bay. The northern part of this peninsula is connected with the mainland by a low neck of marshy ground, and about one-sixteenth of a mile from its southeastern extremity a firm, hard sand-pit nearly joined it to the adjacent shore, severed only by a narrow channel through which the surplus waters of an inclosed swamp escaped into the bay. The south and west sides rose abruptly from the beach, forming an embankment from three to fifteen feet high; and proceeding thence northerly, the ground undulated for an eighth of a mile, when it gradually sloped towards the swamp and neck.
  At the intersection of the latter with the main, and overlooking the water, rose a mound about thirty feet above the level of the bay; and to the eastward through a depression in the hills, and passing the head of the swamp, was a broad Indian trail leading to Lake Duwam-sh [now Lake Washington], distant two and a half miles.
  Phelps remarks that the tailings from Henry Yesler's recently erected mill were steadily filling in the marshy land at the north of the head or peninsula where the settlement was located. He  described the arrangement of the troops arrayed in defense on the nights before the battle:
  The divisions… nightly occupied the shore, vigilantly guarding the people as they slept, and resting only when the morning light released them from the apprehended attack. … [They] were distributed along the line of defense in the following order: The fourth, under Lieutenant Dallas, commencing at Southeast Point, extended along the bay shore to the sand-bar, where, meeting with the right of the first division, Lieutenant Drake, the latter continued the line facing the swamp to a point half-way from the bar to a hotel situated midway between the bar and Yesler's place, and there joined the second, under Lieutenant Hughes, whose left, resting on the hotel (see Mother Damnable), completed an unbroken line between the latter and Southeast Point, while the howitzer's crew, Lieutenant Morris, was stationed near Plummer's house, to sweep the bar and to operate wherever circumstances demanded. The third division, Lieutenant Phelps, occupied that portion of the neck lying between the swamp and mound east of Yesler's place, to secure the approaches leading from the lake, and the marines, under Sergeant Carbine, garrisoned the block-house.
  The divisions, thus stationed, left a gap between the second and third, which the width and impassable nature of the swamp at this place rendered unnecessary to close, thereby enabling a portion of the town to be encompassed which otherwise would have been exposed.
  The distance between the block-house and Southeast Point, following the sinuosities of the bay and swamp shores, was three-quarters of a mile, to be defended by ninety-six men, eighteen marines, and five officers, leaving Gunner Stocking, Carpenter Miller, Clerks Francis and Ferguson, and fifteen men with Lieutenant Middleton, to guard the ship.
caption: Memorial plaque for the blockhouse fort formerly located at Cherry Street
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