Talk:Battle of Seattle (1856)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
Additional information: This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-Class status: Referencing and citation: not checked Coverage and accuracy: not checked Structure: not checked Grammar: not checked Supporting materials: not checked To fill out this checklist, please add the following to the template call: <!-- 1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points are appropriately cited. --> |B-Class-1=yes/no <!-- 2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain major omissions or inaccuracies. --> |B-Class-2=yes/no <!-- 3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content. --> |B-Class-3=yes/no <!-- 4. It is free from major grammatical errors. --> |B-Class-4=yes/no <!-- 5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams. --> |B-Class-5=yes/no Related task forces (nations and regions): United States military history task force

An entry from Battle of Seattle (1856) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 6 November 2006.

	This article is part of WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America, which collaborates on Native American, First Nations, and related subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
???	This article has not yet been rated on the assessment scale.
Suggested article edit guidelines: To help us prioritise our workload, and in readiness for Wikipedia:1.0, we need to assess our articles for Quality. If this article is Unassessed, please assess it. See the Article Classification for instructions. If you disagree with a rating, you can change it or discuss it at Article Classification. Before assessing this article, be sure to check the existing Archive of assessments made under the previous system (used until July 2006), and feel free to help in migrating the existing comments besides from adding your own evaluation. After assessing this article's quality, please make sure it to add it to the Lists at Article Classification, following the grading scheme detailed there.
Please rate this article and leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

This article is part of WikiProject Washington, a comprehensive WikiProject dedicated to articles about topics related to the U.S. state of Washington. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or join by visiting the project page, or contribute to the project discussion.

[edit] T.S. Phelps, vocabulary, and other things

Like almost everyone else who has written about the battle, I have drawn heavily on T.S. Phelps. His account of the events is lively and circumstantial, but riven through with the racial prejudices of his time. I believe I have minimized the extent two which those have made it into the article.

I'm a little stumped on one vocabulary issue. Phelps generally uses the word "Indians", which has fallen out of favor, and "whites", which is more apropos but ignores the fact that at least one of the sailors was black, that some of the settlers were of various mixed ancestries, etc. I've used "natives" and "settlers", but I'm not totally satisfied with that choice either.

I'm not sure exactly which natives are Phelps's "Lake Indians". I don't think they correspond to one surviving organized tribe. I'm guessing that they form part of what are now the Duwamish, and that they were the ones who lived along what is no Lake Washington rather than along the Duwamish River. I'm sure the article could be greatly improved by someone who knows more of the history from the native side.

Also, I'm a little chagrined that I don't have a source handy that conveys what an incompetent and barbaric son of a bitch Governor Stevens was. Some of it comes through even in Phelps's narrative (he sails away saying "no problem here" less than a week before the attack, and you can imagine what a rebuke it was to him when Klakum et.al. were acquitted while he still had Patkanim out gathering scalps. (By the way, Bill Speidel has in one of his books an excellent anecdote about Patkanim showing up in the governor's office with his men, slapping scalps down on the desk, and demanding—and receiving—payment.) What he doesn't really get into was the degree to which the war was Stevens' fault in the first place, because he had forced a series of unequal treaties on the native peoples and had operated in bad faith at every turn. Probably as the article is further worked on, some of this should make it in. Some of this, but not nearly enough, can be found at Yakima War. Our article on Stevens (which, by the way, is completely unreferenced), seems reasonably accurate on his character. - Jmabel | Talk 07:10, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Good article so far!

• I added the --NorthAmNative-- tag so that some of those contributors may be drawn to this article and, perhaps, answer some of the issues you bring up.
• Speidel certainly seems to agree with your assessment of Stevens!
• Is the Battle of Seattle (1856) part of a larger, named conflict involving the Indians in Washington Territory - perhaps the Puget Sound War? Is there some relationship between this event and the hanging of Nisqually Chief Leschi February 19, 1858? rewinn 04:22, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose it is part of the Puget Sound War, but I was unfamiliar with that term (and I live there).

There is no direct connection between this battle and the hanging of Chief Leschi. Leschi was hanged for a killing that historians seem generally to agree he did not commit and that was probably a legitimate act of war by whoever did commit it. Most of our article on Leschi is about the now nearly universal opinion that he was framed, an opinion that (as you can see from that article) had pretty strong currency even at the time and even among white settlers. - Jmabel | Talk 00:25, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm in Belltown myself. Growing up in Everett, I never heard a lot about Indian resistence to our settlement. There was actually an Indian corpse (or so it was said) on display at the Monte Cristo museum when I was a kid; something that would be inconceivable now (...as long as you don't look at those gross "Body" posters everywhere.) It would be interesting to find a history that combines the initial resistence of Patkanim (followed by his swift enlistment on "our" side; the raids by the Eastern Wa Indians that culminated in the Batte of Seattle (1856), and the fighting that let to Leschi's execution. Perhaps some local historian, or someone from United Indians of All Tribes would know. ... Anyway, thanks for getting this article going; it's quite interesting! rewinn 01:20, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I tried (and failed) a couple of years ago to get involvement in Wikipedia from someone at United Indians of All Tribes, but it wouldn't hurt to try again. I expect to have some time in January, I should go by Daybreak Star and try to talk to them again. - Jmabel | Talk 02:22, 19 November 2006 (UTC)