Contact and rapid change

See also: History of Seattle before 1900 § Relations with the natives

From the 1800s, the maritime fur trade in the Puget Sound-Strait of Georgia accelerated the pace of social and organizational change.^[25] White settlements at sbuh-KWAH-buks (Alki) and what is now Pioneer Square in Downtown Seattle were established in 1851 and 1852.
By the time Coast Salish began to realize the implications of the changes brought by Europeans at ever-increasing rates, the time was late. After just five years, lands were occupied; the Treaty of Point Elliott was signed in 1855. There is question about its legitimacy, from the lack of understanding of the two sides about each other to the motivations of the U.S. government and its agents.^[26] Whites recognized leaders more or less at their own choosing, bypassing what they saw as the maddening fluidity of tribal leadership. The potlatch was widely banned, and the longhouse soon suppressed.^[17][23]

Prominent contact-era Duwamish people

The role of the most famous of the Duwamish, Chief Seattle (b. c. 1784, d. 1866; see below for more detailed discussion of his name), is complex and enigmatic.^[27] Chief Seattle's mother Sholeetsa was of the People of the Inside and his father Shweabe was si'ab ("high status man") of the Suquamish. Chief Seattle's career earned and validated his inherited status. As an adult he was among the leaders of his people from the times they were the People of the Inside and the People of the Large Lake to becoming known as the Duwamish tribe. Chief Seattle had two wives and seven children, probably the most famous being his daughter, known as Princess Angeline. Some of the family tree of Chief Seattle is known today.

Chudups John and others in a canoe on Lake Union, Seattle, c. 1885

Besides Chief Seattle and his descendants, Lake John Cheshiahud and his family are among the few late-19th century Duwamish individuals about whom anything specific is known. He is found in archives as Cheshiahud, Cheslahud, Lake John Cheshiahud, or Chudups John. He was one of the few Duwamish people who did not move from Seattle to the Port Madison Reservation. He and his family lived on Portage Bay, part of Seattle's Lake Union, in the 1880s, where the photo at right was taken.^[28] According to the Duwamish Tribe, Chudups John had a cabin and potato patch at the foot of Shelby Street (either West Montlake Park or the Roanoke neighborhood, on either side of Portage Bay), as late as 1900 on land given him by pioneer David Denny (or property he purchased— see Cheshiahud).^[29] Photographer Orion O. Denny recorded Old Tom and Madeline, c. 1904, further noted in the archives of the University of Washington Library as Madeline and Old John, also known as Indian John or Cheshishon, who had a house on Portage Bay in the 1900s, south of what is now the UW campus.^[30]

Duwamish man & woman, Old Tom and Madeline, Portage Bay, Seattle, c 1904. "Old Tom" is almost certainly Chudups John.

Chudups John and his family, like Princess Angeline, seem to have been excepted from the law by which Native people had been prohibited from residence in Seattle since the mid-1860s.^[31] Their story is typical of the relatively few Natives remaining in Seattle after proscription, the rest having moved or died of diseases.^[32] In 1927, his daughter Jennie (Janey) provided a list of the villages along Lake Washington that is a primary source of current knowledge of the village locations.^[5]
Hwehlchtid, known as "Salmon Bay Charlie," of the shill-shohl-AHBSH lived in the village of shill-SHOHL on the southern shore Salmon Bay, and was very loath to leave. (The village near today's Hiram M. Chittenden Locks lends its name to today's Shilshole Bay, immediately northwest of Salmon Bay.) Charlie and his wife Chilohleet'sa (Madelline) remained in their traditional homeland long after others of their tribe had moved away. In about 1905, long-time Seattle Times photographers Ira Webster and Nelson Stevens photographed Salmon Bay Charlie's house at Shilshole with a canoe anchored offshore.^[33]