Combat· Pacific Northwest Indian Wars
Battle of Seattle
The largest Marine combat engagement in the Pacific Northwest, and a founding episode in the early history of Seattle.
During the Puget Sound War, a large body of warriors, drawn from the Nisqually, Puyallup, and allied tribes and associated with the leader Leschi, gathered to attack the small settlement of Seattle. The sloop USS Decatur lay in the harbor, and her Marines and sailors went ashore to form the core of the defense, supported by the ship's nine-inch shell guns firing over the village. Through a day-long engagement the landing force and the settlers held the town against the attack, several of the defenders being wounded, before the warriors broke off and withdrew. The settlement was preserved. The Decatur's intervention was decisive: without the warship and her landing party, the exposed little town could hardly have withstood the assault, and the action loomed large in Seattle's early memory.
Record no. 385