The Forgotten History Behind Kitsap County
A look at the origins of regional place names, from the renaming of a county to the memory of local chiefs.
Kitsap County was formerly called Slaughter County in honor of Lieut. W. A. Slaughter, United States Army, who was killed on December 4, 1855. The people were later given the privilege of choosing another name at a general election, and they chose Kitsap, the name of one of the Indian chiefs whose tribe occupied a part of the county. The Washington Territorial legislature legalized that name in an act approved January 16, 1857. The Indian word Kitsap meant 'brave.' During the war against the Indians on the Puget Sound, Kitsap, Leschi, and other chiefs were captured and tried by civil authorities. Kitsap eventually was acquitted, freed, and permitted to return to his people.
“The Indian word Kitsap meant 'brave,' according to Professor Meany.”
The renaming of the county from 'Slaughter'—a name that honored a military figure involved in the regional Indian Wars—to 'Kitsap' reflects a mid-19th-century shift in local self-determination and the reclaiming of Indigenous identity in Washington’s geography.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.