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History of Seattle

Name: History of Seattle — From Coast Salish Lands to Tech City
Author: Bitecards Originals (2026)

Seattle's story in 35 cards, from the Duwamish and Coast Salish homeland on Puget Sound to the modern tech city of Amazon and Microsoft — the timber town, the great fire, the gold rush, Boeing, grunge, and all the rest. Every card ties the history to the Seattle you can still see today: the neighborhood, building, or living legacy behind each turn.

Based on History of Seattle by Bitecards Originals (2026)

First Peoples · Founding · Timber Town · Fire & Rebirth · Boomtown · Century of Industry · Reinvention · Modern Seattle · The Setting

The land before the city

People of the Inside Water

Long before any street was laid, the Duwamish and their Coast Salish relatives lived along Puget Sound — an inland sea of salmon, cedar, and tide.

The Duwamish — the Dkhw'Duw'Absh, the People of the Inside — lived where two rivers ran down into Elliott Bay, one nation among many Coast Salish peoples on the Sound.

Life ran on the tide and the salmon runs. Cedar gave longhouses, canoes, and rope; the water gave salmon and shellfish. Winter villages stood where downtown is today.

This was never empty wilderness. It was a tended homeland, its beaches and streams known and named by generations — and the settlers of 1851 were latecomers to it.

History of Seattle

#02

First Peoples

Chief Si'ahl of the Duwamish

The Man the City Is Named For

Seattle is one of the few major American cities named for a Native leader — Chief Si'ahl, a Duwamish and Suquamish headman.

Si'ahl, whose name settlers wrote as Sealth and then Seattle, was born around 1786 and led both the Duwamish and Suquamish. He was known for his stature and his oratory.

As settlers arrived he chose engagement over war, keeping ties with figures such as the physician David Doc Maynard while his people's world was remade around them.

By some accounts he was uneasy that the town had taken his name, believing his rest would be disturbed each time it was spoken. He died in 1866, buried near Suquamish.

History of Seattle

#03

First Peoples

A treaty kept, a speech invented

The Words He May Never Have Said

The most quoted Native American speech in the world is attributed to Chief Seattle. Most of its famous words were written by other men.

In January 1855 at Mukilteo, Chief Seattle and other leaders signed the Treaty of Point Elliott, ceding vast lands. Within a decade Seattle passed an ordinance pushing Native people out.

That history is documented and grievous. The beloved speech is another matter: the poetic lines about the web of life were not recorded from Chief Seattle's mouth.

Dr. Henry A. Smith published an ornate version in 1887; a screenwriter rewrote it again in the 1970s. Hold both truths — the treaty was real, the sermon is of disputed authorship.

History of Seattle

#04

Founding

The Denny Party lands, 1851

New York-Alki

On a wet November day in 1851, a small band of settlers stepped off a schooner onto a windswept point and gave it a grand, hopeful name.

The Denny Party — led by Arthur Denny, with the Boren, Bell, and Terry families — sailed north from Portland aboard the schooner Exact and landed at Alki Point on November 13, 1851.

They named it New York-Alki. Alki is Chinook Jargon for by and by — a wry promise of a New York, in time. The ambition outran a dozen people in the rain.

That first winter was brutal, cold and exposed to the open Sound, and the site proved too shallow for the deepwater port they dreamed of. Within months they went looking.

In this deck

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History of Seattle

In this deck

People of the Inside Water

The Man the City Is Named For

The Words He May Never Have Said

New York-Alki

Across to Elliott Bay

The Mill and the Skid Road

The Mercer Girls

The Expulsion of 1886

The Day the City Burned

Reborn in Brick and Stone

The City Beneath the City

Washing Away the Hills

The Railroad Reaches Salt Water

Gateway to the Goldfields

The Soul of the City

The Tower That Touched the Sky

Boeing and the Jet City

The City That Stopped

Hooverville on the Tideflats

Wings and Ships at War

The Empty Houses

Century 21

Turn Out the Lights

The City That Ran on Coffee

Software City

The Sound That Shook the World

The Everything City

The Battle of Seattle

The City of Cranes

Tearing Down the Wall

Between the Sound and the Lake

Cutting the Canal

A City on the Water

The Mountain Is Out

Rain, Coffee, and the Emerald City