“After a long illness, during which the old chief was frequently visited by natives and early white settlers from all over the Sound, he died at the Old-Man-House. His funeral was attended by several hundred white people and by more of his own people. G. A. Meigs, proprietor of the Port Madison mill, shut down his mill and on his steamer took all the employes and others over to the funeral. A great many also went over from Seattle. As the old chief was a Catholic he was buried with the ceremonies of that church, mingled with which were customs peculiar to the natives. The ceremonies were imposing and impressive, and the chanting of the litanies by the native singers was very beautiful.
“During his life Chief Sealth had two or three successive wives, but he did not have many children.
“Princess Angeline was his only child by his first wife. When I first knew her she was a washerwoman for the white people, among whom she was a great favorite, and although she was a buxom widow and not bad-looking, she was always esteemed as a virtuous, good woman. She had a daughter who married a half-breed, and by whom she had a son, now living, named Joe Foster. His parents died early and old Angeline has reared him, slaved for him and begged for him. She has gotten him out of many scrapes and her whole heart is wrapped up in the boy, ‘My papa’s great-grandchild.’
“Angeline had a half-sister who married a chief on Lake Samamish and died some time ago, but I don’t know any more about her. I think Chief Sealth also left by his last wife a son, who is now living at Old-Man-House. This son has a grandson there who is a dwarf. He is 20 years old and is only thirty inches tall, is very bright, well formed, talks English and is the pet of all the Indians on the reservation.
“During the past thirty-three years I have on many occasions endeavored to learn from the oldest and most intelligent Indians something of their earlier recollections; for instance as to when the heaviest earthquake occurred. They said that one is said to have occurred a great many years before any white men had ever been seen here, when mam-ook ta-mahn-a-wis was carried on by hundreds. This is the same performance they go through when they are making medicine men, and consists of shouting, singing, beating on the drums and sticks and apparently trying to make as much noise as they can. While making a medicine man I have seen upwards of 100 painted Indians driving on the streets here a young man stripped nearly naked, with a long lariat fastened to a girdle around his waist. At one time it took them over a week to make a ta-mahn-a-wis man of the fellow they were driving. After he became supernaturally fixed he came near dying, and old Dr. Maynard, the only physician then in town, was called in to give him a dose of civilized medicine.
“The only total eclipse of the sun visible here during the past thirty-four years occurred about twenty-five years ago during a clear afternoon. The white settlers were preparing their smoked glasses. Ex-Chief Lake John happened to come by about that time, and I told him in Chinook that the sun was to be darkened in about an hour from that time. He very sharply inquired how I knew, and I told him I was in klosh tum-tum with the Sah-ha-le tyee, or that I was on good terms with God. He laughed heartily at such a ridiculous notion, but when the sun began to be obscured I handed him a piece of smoked glass, and after looking through it he became very grave, and looking at the sky in amazement he said with great seriousness, ‘De-late mi-ka cum-tux,’ you have told the truth. When the eclipse became total the howling and pounding of drums over at Plummer’s point, where the Indians were assembled, could be heard all over town.
“In 1880, when the deep snow occurred in January, there being over four feet of the beautiful, I inquired of an old Indian if he had ever seen snow so deep before, and he said no, but that his father had told him that there was one fall of snow many years before which was equal to it. Lake Union has been frozen all over twice, and a number of times has formed two to five inches thick in sheltered places of the lake. Only twice since 1856 has it been as cold as it was this winter.
“A son of Pat Kanim, the old chief of the Snoqualmies, who now lives on the Tulalip reservation, told me that his father had been a good, true friend of the whites during the Indian war, and he corroborated what A. A. Denny has said in his history of that war. He said that Mr. Denny had with good reason placed confidence in his father, notwithstanding that others thought he was not worthy of it. He said that Leschi and Nelson were the leaders in the massacre near Slaughter, where eight whites were killed in 1855. These were the same tribes that had attempted the raid fifty years before which Chief Sealth foiled, and the same which attacked the town of Seattle in 1856. This time they came across Lake Washington instead of down the river, landing their canoes where is now located Leschi park. They had not forgotten Sealth’s plan of resisting an invasion by the river route.”
To Dr. Maynard it is said belongs the honor of naming the city of Seattle after the old chief and also of conferring the name Angeline on his daughter.
There is one descendant of the old chief who is at once the pride and the one particular character of the Queen City today. That descendant is Angeline, daughter of the old chief; Princess Angeline she is called. She is not courtly or noble in bearing and never showed any superior powers of intellect, indeed, it is not saying too much to say that to the present residents who know her she does not exhibit even average Indian intelligence, though great and enfeebled old age may in a measure account for it. Angeline had a revelation last year when she was shown a painting of the old chief, life size and true to the original. It is said of her that at least she showed that she had a tender memory and soft heart, for she cried and went about the streets muttering in her Indian way: “Utch i-dah, utch-i-dah; nika papa hias klosh.” Wonderful! wonderful! good picture of Sealth.