New Book
This is the first thorough historical account of Chief Seattle and his times–the story of a half-century of tremendous flux, turmoil, and violence, during which a native American war leader became an advocate for peace and strove to create a successful hybrid racial community. When the British, Spanish, and then Americans arrived in the Pacific Northwest, it may have appeared to them as an untamed wilderness. In fact, it was a fully settled and populated land. Chief Seattle was a powerful representative from this very ancient world. Historian David Buerge has been researching and writing this book about the world of Chief Seattle for the past 20 years. Buerge has threaded together disparate accounts of the time from the 1780s to the 1860s–including native oral histories, Hudson Bay Company records, pioneer diaries, French Catholic church records, and historic newspaper reporting. Chief Seattle had gained power and prominence on Puget Sound as a war leader, but the arrival of American settlers caused him to reconsider his actions. He came to embrace white settlement and, following traditional native practice, encouraged intermarriage between native people and the settlers, offering his own daughter and granddaughters as brides, in the hopes that both peoples would prosper. Included in this account are the treaty signings that would remove the natives from their historic lands, the roles of such figures as Governor Isaac Stevens, Chiefs Leschi and Patkanim, the Battle at Seattle that threatened the existence of the settlement, and the controversial Chief Seattle speech that haunts to this day the city that bears his name.
About the Author:
David M. Buerge, a biographer and a historian to the Duwamish Tribe, Seattle’s mother’s people, spent more than 20 years exploring the man from a variety of sources to reveal a leader of epic character. He was a warrior, an orator, a benefactor, and a visionary who helped found the city that bears his name, Seattle, the largest city in the world named after a Native American. Buerge, a historian, teacher, and writer, has been researching the pre- and early history of the City of Seattle since the mid-1970s. He has published fourteen books of history and biography. Buerge’s latest book, Chief Seattle and the Town that Took His Name, is the first biography of Chief Seattle intended for adults. Buerge lives in Everett.
David Buerge
Chief Seattle and the Town That Took His Name by David M. Buerge Reviews:
“The man known to so many as Chief Seattle has deserved a proper biography for a long, long time. This book, based on years of painstaking research, is a window not only into the life of one important Indigenous leader, but into the birth of the Northwest’s premier metropolis. A must-read for anyone interested in Seattle history.”—Coll Thrush, author of Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place
“This is the Seattle book we’ve been waiting for. Dave Buerge finally puts flesh on the bones of Seattle’s namesake, cutting through myth to give us the man in all his glory and complexity. More than a city’s namesake, Chief Seattle was our city’s key visionary and cofounder, and he remains a voice of conscience. Chief Seattle and the Town That Took His Name is a foundational work for anyone who wants to understand the city and the roots from which it grows.”—Knute Berger, Crosscut and Seattle magazine columnist
“This book, the first full biography of Seattle’s namesake, was a yearslong work of devotion by Buerge, a Seattle historian. It tells both the chief’s story and the tragic history of Native Americans at the early years of Seattle’s settlement by whites, and resurrects the life of a determined leader who never failed to keep his people’s welfare in his sights. A classic work of Seattle history.”–Mary Ann Gwinn, The Seattle Times
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