Battle of Seattle (1856)

Battle of Seattle

Map of Seattle during the battle, drawn by Lieutenant Phelps of the USS Decatur

Date	January 26, 1856
Location	Seattle, Washington, United States
Result	United States victory

Belligerents

United States

Native Americans

Commanders and leaders

Guert Gansevoort

unknown

Casualties and losses

2 killed

unknown

The Battle of Seattle was a January 26, 1856 attack by Native Americans upon Seattle, Washington. At the time, Seattle was a settlement in the Washington Territory that had recently named itself after Chief Seattle (Sealth), a leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish peoples of central Puget Sound.

Backed by artillery fire and supported by Marines from the United States Navy sloop-of-war Decatur, anchored in Elliott Bay (Seattle's harbor, then called Duwam-sh Bay), the settlers suffered only two deaths. It is not known if any of the Native American raiders died, though the historian Phelps writes that they later "would admit" to 28 dead and 80 wounded. The battle, part of the multi-year Puget Sound War or Yakima War, lasted a single day.

The Seattle settlement of the time was located roughly where Seattle's Pioneer Square now sits. T. S. Phelps's memoir of the time described the settlement as:

…on a point, or rather a small peninsula, projecting from the eastern shore, and about two miles (3 km) from the mouth of Duwam-sh River, debouching at the head of the bay. The northern part of this peninsula is connected with the mainland by a low neck of marshy ground, and about one-sixteenth of a mile from its southeastern extremity a firm, hard sand-pit nearly joined it to the adjacent shore, severed only by a narrow channel through which the surplus waters of an inclosed swamp escaped into the bay. The south and west sides rose abruptly from the beach, forming an embankment from three to fifteen feet high; and proceeding thence northerly, the ground undulated for an eighth of a mile, when it gradually sloped towards the swamp and neck.

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