Combat
Pacific Northwest Indian Wars
The earliest significant Marine combat in the Pacific Northwest, fought during the wider Puget Sound War between American settlers and the region's tribes.
In early 1856, with Washington Territory aflame, Marines and sailors from the sloop USS Decatur under Commander Gansevoort came to the defense of the small settlement of Seattle, repulsing a coordinated attack on the village on 26 January in what became known as the Battle of Seattle. Later in the year Marines also took part in a fight at Port Gamble on Puget Sound against seaborne raiders, the so-called Northern Indians, who had been preying on the region, an action in which one of the American party was killed. The operations brought the Corps into the frontier fighting of the far Northwest for the first time, the ships' landing forces standing in defense of isolated settlements against attacks the territory's own resources could not yet meet.
Engagements in this conflict (2)
Record no. 364