Princess Angeline: The Final Reminder of Chief Seattle

She was one of the humblest of residents within early Seattle. The town was named after her father. He had died on June 7, 1866 and was buried at the Port Madison Indian Reservation across Puget Sound from his beloved city.

She became the symbolic reminder of the Duwamish Tribe and Suquamish peoples that once controlled the Puget Sound landscape. She represented the broken promises branded upon the original natives with each fractured treaty.

Chief Seattle’s youngest daughter Angeline became a notable presence in the city named after her father. She was born reportedly in 1820 and given the name Angeline by Seattle founder David Doc Maynard’s wife Catherine Broshears.

She lived on the fringes of society in a small shanty near the waterfront on Western Avenue, between Pike and Pine Streets (now part of the Pike Place Market). She spent her daylight hours sitting on downtown curbs watching the traffic pass and the city continue to expand. She did laundry for the settlers, posed for tourist photographs, and sold woven baskets and trinkets. Souvenir memorabilia immortalized her.

Bent and wrinkled while wearing a shawl and red handkerchief over her head, she became an icon representing the original Puget Sound Native American tribes. Arthritis prompted her to walk slowly with the aid of a cane.

She never exemplified the role cast upon her as royalty or anyone’s imagined idea of a princess. Yet she would become lionized upon her death.

She died on May 31, 1896 and was laid to rest near the Henry Yesler family inside Lake View Cemetery. They had financed her burial site. Her lavish funeral ceremony was conducted at the Church of Our Lady of Good Help. A local fundraiser years later by Seattle schoolchildren ultimately purchased her headstone.

These tributes echoed loudly the esteem that she had accumulated as an observer speaking softly and repeatedly into her rosary beads. She witnessed firsthand Seattle transforming from an elemental settlement into a metropolitan urban core.