A Memory of the Battle of Seattle
An early settler and former U.S. Marshal reflects on the 'battle-scarred' house he occupied during the 1856 Indian attack on Seattle.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
We had with us in the carriage an old Virginian named Hillary Butler, who has been in the Sound country since 1851, and was once United States Marshal for Washington Territory, and was in the blockhouse at Seattle at the time of the attempted massacre of the whites in 1856 by the Indians. He showed me the battle-scarred house in which he lived at the time the Indians swooped down upon the unsuspecting settler. Had it not been for the accidental presence of the American man-of-war Decatur, which had put in from the Pacific ocean for repairs, and played upon the Indians with her guns, not a soul would have been left to tell the tale. Some years ago he bought two lots in Seattle, one for $75 and the other for $100, and built upon them in a crude way, and his rents (with a half lot still in reserve) bring him $325 per month and his board and lodging. He refused $30,000 for his property.
“He showed me the battle-scarred house in which he lived at the time the Indians swooped down upon the unsuspecting settler.”
This provides a stark, biased 19th-century view of the 1856 Battle of Seattle—a foundational event in the city's history that shaped the displacement and exclusion of the Duwamish and other Indigenous peoples. It also highlights how quickly land values skyrocketed in early Seattle, a theme of ownership and displacement that persists to this day.
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