What
is now Seattle has been inhabited since the end of the last ice age.
Archaeological excavations at West Point in Discovery Park, Magnolia,
confirm that the Seattle area has been inhabited by humans for at
least 4,000 years. tohl-AHL-too ("herring house") and later
hah-AH-poos ("where there are horse clams") at the mouth
of the Duwamish River in what is now the Industrial District has been
inhabited since the 6th century BC. By the time the first European
settlers arrived in the area, the Dkhw'Duw'Absh and Xachua'Bsh people
(now called the Duwamish Tribe) occupied at least seventeen villages
in the areas around Elliott Bay.
The first Europeans to attempt settlement in the area were the Collins
Party, who filed legal claim to land at the mouth of the Duwamish
River on September 14, 1851. Thirteen days later, members of the Collins
Party were on the way to their claim when they passed the scouts of
the group of settlers that would eventually found Seattle, the Denny
Party. The scouts for the Denny Party, Terry Lee, David Denny, and
John Low, would lay claim to land on Alki Point on September 28, 1851,
with Terry Low returning to Portland, Oregon carrying a message from
David Denny telling his brother, Arthur Denny, to "Come at once."
Following the instructions of David Denny, the rest of the Denny Party
set sail from Portland and landed on Alki during a rainstorm on November
13, 1851. The landing party's first sight of their new homestead was
the roofless cabin that David had been unable to complete because
of a fever
After spending a winter of frequent rainstorms and high winds on Alki
Point, most of the Denny Party moved across Elliott Bay and settled
on land where present day Pioneer Square is located and established
the village of "Dewamps" or "Duwamps." The only
members of the party that did not migrate to the eastern shore of
Elliott Bay were Charles Terry and John Low, who remained at the original
landing location and established a village they initially called "New
York," after Terry's hometown, until April 1853 when they renamed
it "Alki," a Chinook word meaning, roughly, by and by or
someday. The villages of New York-Alki and Duwamps would compete for
dominance in the area for the next few years, but in time Alki was
abandoned and its residents moved across the bay to join the rest
of the settlers.
David Swinson ("Doc") Maynard, one of the village's founders,
was the primary advocate for renaming the village to "Seattle"
after Chief Sealth (si'áb Si'ahl) of the Duwamish and Suquamish
tribes. Doc Maynard's advocacy bore fruit, because when the first
plats for village were filed on May 23, 1853, it was for the Town
of Seattle. In 1855, nominal legal land settlement were established
and the city was incorporated in 1865 and again in 1869, after having
existed as an unincorporated town from 1867 to 1869.
