Culture Exchange Highlight
A Visit to Chief Sealth's Home, Gravesite

"Discover Puget Sound's roots from the days when there were many firs and no freeways. Visit Suquamish, where the tribal chief for whom Seattle was named lived communally in what amounted to a mansion of the early 1900s: a beachfront longhouse reputedly more than 500 feet long. Today, Chief Sealth is buried in a small cemetery just up the hill, with a glimpse through tall, guardian evergreens of the swirling waters of narrow Agate Passage.

Nearby, a museum dedicated to the history of the Suquamish and other Puget Sound tribes helps people your imagination, with photos of residents of early-day tribal villages."

Chief Sealth of the Suquamish
Chief Sealth, a hereditary leader of the Suquamish Tribe, was born around 1986, passed away on June 7, 1866, and is buried in the tribal cemetery at Suquamish, Washington. Readong his grave marker, in the tribal cemetery surrounded by a split-rail fence next to the white-steepled St. Peter's Catholic Mission, one thing is quickly notes – varying spellings of both the chief's name and the name of his tribe, based on various interpretations of the tribal language. His white marble marker is inscribed "Seattle, Chief of the Suguampsh and Allied tribes. died June 7, 1866, the firm friend of the whites, and for him the City of Seattle was named by its founders." Below that is his other name, "Sealth," and on another side of the stone: "Baptismal name Noah Sealth, age probably 80 years."

Chief SEalth played a key role in treaty negotiations in 1854, when his people were moved to reservations. He was a peaceable man in tune with the earch, as reflected in an historic speech he make then, noting with melancholy that "my people are ebbing away like a fast receding tide that will never flow again." Yet he also delivered a burning message that his people's spirits will forever inhabit this land.

A five-minute drive away is where Chief Sealth once lived, now a pleasant park. The Indian name for the long-gone longhouse translated in Chinook Jargon, the popular trading language of the area, as "O-le-man," or Strong Man. The settler's version of that became Old Man, so his home was Old Man House.

History of Old Man Site and the Suquamish Reservation
Under the treaty of Point Elliot, signed in 1855, the Suquamish people gave up about a quarter million acres to the newly arrived settlers, bt they retained as their reservation about 8,000 acres across Puget Sound from Seattle. The center of the village was Old Man House, the largest longhouse in the region (at least 600 feet long,) a place where the trives would gather for celegrations and where Chief Sealth and hundreds of others lived.

This state of affairs did not last long. The Indian agent ordered the longhouse burned in 1870, shortly after Chief Sealth died, believing that the longhouse way of life was un-Christian and that the Suquamish people should disperse across the reservation and take up farming. The people rebuilt their village on the same site. Soon, the mission church, the school, the cemetery, and homes were once again clustered in the area where the longhouse had once been. But this too was to be short lived.

In 1904, the U.S. military took 70 acres of the waterfront, including Old Man House village, to build fortifications to protect access to the Bremerton Navy shipyards. The houses, church, and cemetery were moved, and a people who had always lived on and near the water lost much of their water access.

The military never did build any fortifications. Instead, after some years, a developer bought the land and subdivided it into building lots for homes. In the 1950s, the Washington Parks and Recreation Department bought an acre where paro of the longhouse had been located to commemorate the historic importance of the site.

Suquamish Tribe Welcomes Old Man House home!
On June 30, 2005, Trible members paddled canoes to the site, home to a major tribal village where Chief Sealth once lived. It was the day the Suquamish Tribe of Washington received the deed to the one-acre Old Man House Park from Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission officials at a joyous and tearful ceremony. This was no ordinary acre to the tribal members, it was home to all the ancestors of the trible. The park never looked more beautiful than it did – filled with people from the tribe whose ancestral village was sited there.

The land will continue to be managed as a state park but under tribal control.