Talk:Battle of Seattle (1856)

message: Which is the right assignment for this battle? rewinn 05:30, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My somewhat lengthy response over at Talk:Puget Sound War Pfly 05:41, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Yakima War]] v. [[Puget Sound War]] 

message: :Just five days before the attack on Seattle, Governor Stevens had declared a "war of extermination" upon the Indians.  
Interesting, I didn't know he'd said it straight out like that; there're parallel phrasing in various BC histories which cover the area/period - I know there's a statement in McGowan's War by DJ Hauka but I thought he was editorializing (though telling the truth); First Nations historians/poilticians describe what went down in British Columbia as genocide, but it far better suits what happened south of the line - which before partition (1846) had been the more populous of the two "halves" of the Columbia Department; not so afterwards huh?  Anyway maybe in Hauka's appendices/footnotes he may point to other materials; I don't think the Akriggs are so harsh, I'll have to look in Begg and Howay/Scholefield, or keep my eye open for similar passages; anyway it's in Hauka for sure (which I don't own) but with what wording I'm not certain, i.e. that ears of extermination occurred in formerly British "territory" now south of the line in the wake of the end of joint occupancy.  But interesting to know it from the source of the policy, and curious given Stevens' rather hagiographic image in popular history (to be someone who ordered what was effectively ethnic cleansing - ah, that might be Hauka's phrasing....).Skookum1 (talk) 21:21, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Morgan quotes Stevens as saying "war until the last hostile Indian is exterminated". Perhaps I'll add the word "hostile" to the line in the article, although in other speeches he seems rather clear in his general aim. In any case, the picture Morgan paints of Stevens is anything but hagiographic, just the opposite. Pfly (talk) 01:33, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wars of Extermination 

message: Changes "part of" from the very general Indian Wars to the more specific Puget Sound War. Changed territorial results from "Native inhabitans driven out of Seattle area" blank -- no territorial changes directly resulted from the Battle of Seattle. Natives were not driven from the Seattle area but rather large numbers continued to live in and around Seattle. The actual attacking party retreated, yes, but that's all. The Puget Sound War could be said to have resulted in territorial changes -- that of the reservations being redrawn, but not the Battle of Seattle so much. So I left that field blank. Changed result from "Decisive American Victory" to "American Victory". A group of Indians attacked and were unable to take Seattle. Is that decisive? Phelps' account might give that sense, Morgan's makes it sound like a draw. Changed commander field for Indians from "Chief Leschi", and casualties from "28 killed, 80 wounded" both to Unknown. Phelps makes a claim about the Indian leaders and the casualties, but Morgan questions both and basically says no one knows. Also changed commander for the Americans from "Unknown" to Gansevoort, as he was commander of the Decatur and, by Morgan's account, basically the commander in charge. Pfly (talk) 23:53, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infobox changes 

message: Rereading this talk page just now I noticed the early comment about not being sure what Phelps means by the Lake Indians, and given Skookum1's guess and my (unsourced) edit, I thought I'd at least give a source. This is from the excellent book Native Seattle by Coll Thrush, in describing three main groups of natives who used to live in what is now Seattle (page 23): "Herring's House... was part of a larger constellation of communities whose members called themselves the People of the Inside Place... Their name for themselves would be anglicized as "Duwamish". A second group, known as the Hachooabsh, or Lake People, and usually described as a band of the Duwamish, lived in towns ringing [Lake Washington]. A third group, with connections to the first two as well as to [the Suquamish], was the Shilshoolabsh, the People of Tucked Away Inside, who took their name from their main settlement [at Salmon Bay]. ...three indigenous communities-- the Duwamish, the Lakes, and the Shilsholes." Pfly (talk) 04:13, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Also of interest, perhaps, is that these kind of place names, "Inside Place", "Tucked Away Inside", and a number of similar ones in the Puget Sound area, come from the need for coastal settlements to be hidden away on some little bay or inlet, to be more secure from raiders from the north (Tlingit, Haida, etc). Pfly (talk) 04:35, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lake Indians 

message: Added Pierce County, Washington to the list of King and Thurston, and removed comment about Thurston being "directly south of" King County. Pierce County was in between the two, and saw a good share of the fighting -- perhaps the majority of it. The footnote to a HistoryLink.org article is good, and historylink does in fact mention only King and Thurston. But historylink.org has a number of mistakes in it and this seems to be one. There were no real "battles" in the Puget Sound War, but some of the main "skirmishes" occurred in Pierce County, including, if I'm not mistaken, the culminating battle at Connells Prairie. I know that was in Pierce County: I've been to the memorial monument there. I even took a picture. Pfly (talk) 04:14, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pierce County