David Lewis' account of Moses Seattle is a rare and thoughtful portrayal of a unique but little-known figure, suffering people and a difficult period in our shared history that we must embrace.
The Duwamish helped supplement settlers’ pinched diet with fresh fish, fowl, game,
clams, and bulbs. They taught Mary Ann Denny, too sick to nurse baby Rolland, how to keep him alive with clam nectar.
The present occupant of the White House has obviously never read history or cares to. Trump and his supporters prefer a puerile chauvinism to histories that more properly define us.
The original river differed sharply from ours. Its watershed heading in the Cascades and flowing west and north to the Sound. This was the DKHW duw, “Place where [it goes] inside,” a Lushootseed description of a legendary homeland for the Duwamish.
Humans have lived in western Washington for at least 14,000 years, from the Ice Age to the present. We know them from 19th century tribal names: Duwamish, Muckleshoot, Suquamish, Tulalip, etc. Today, the issues of fishing rights and casinos make headlines, but the tribes’ profound antiquity and management of the environment is less well known.
The ancestors of the modern Duwamish Tribe have lived here for more than 600 generations surviving every great subduction quake, volcanic disaster, and local cataclysm. They have much to tell and teach us.
Tribal elders and an archaeologist declared Luma a CMT, a Culturally Modified Tree, as it was split when young to mark a trail. The Snoqualmie Tribe also argued that rocks strung from limbs made them grow at right angles to mark directions to resource areas.
His critics claimed that he constructed faux villages and hired actors to portray adoring peasants during Catherine’s leisurely triumph through Ukraine, and moved the sets to the next stop to re-stage the performance. This gave rise to the notion of a fake façade erected to convince observers that things were better than they actually were, the famous Potemkin Villages.