The City of Si’ahl

As a citizen of the Web I have met the world, who ask the most daunting question with their first words… “So, where are you from?” “Seattle,” I reply. “Where?” they all respond. I eventually found the simplest answer to be, “I’m from the Space Needle.” “Oh, there… Cool!” Though I did not arrive at that simplest solution without first trying Microsoft, Nirvana, Coffee, Frasier, and the least helpful? I am the Fremont Troll, who much like the rest of our Greatest City on Earth, no one has ever heard of. But perhaps that is what makes this place so special?

But why don’t they know us? Have we not made our impression? Let’s figure out this popularity disparity, because if you’ve spent much time in Seattle, you know we think we’re great. But is this just rain induced delirium? Why is Seattle so great? There is our ecological diversity few others can match: with our dueling mountain ranges, islands, and volcanos all within a temperate rainforest. Though none of which are so impactful in Brazil, Jordan, or Singapore as the Space Needle. I mean seriously, who else has put a UFO on top of three six-hundred foot tall sticks, perched over a city, in a War of the Worlds motif?

So we have the one thing… which would go a long way toward explaining why this temporary structure intended to stand only a few years, is still with us six decades later. Iconic notability, adorning an otherwise unremarkable seaport, the fourth largest in America, where the eighteenth largest of our cities enjoys the eleventh largest GDP, with a twenty-one percent growth rate. Yeah, nothing to see here, except that we are the northernmost major city in the United States. That is two notable things, if you aren’t counting.

We have tried to make our impression though, from logging, to ship and aircraft manufacturing, to the technology centers of the planet’s second, twelfth, and fifteenth largest companies: Amazon, Microsoft, and Costco. You’d think at least that Bill Gates, Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Lee, or Curt Cobain would have mentioned us enough for the world who worships them, to at least know we exist? Well, we always have Matt Groening, who talks us up on The Simpsons. But thus far, with all due respect to our northern position, nothing else seems to help our notability… Giving rain induced delirium another up vote.

Tied at two, two. Let’s go back to the beginning and see if we can figure this out, as Seattle does have a little ancient history, where the ancestors of the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes, were slowly extincting the twelve foot tall Sea-Tac Giant Sloth, and other large herbivores, maybe even a Mastodon, ever so long before the Denny Party landed on Alki Beach in 1851. Wherefrom they would scout their settlement on the eastern shore of Elliott Bay and name it in appreciation of these local guides, and reverence for their leader? Seattle! To honor Chief Si’ahl.

Hang on, name it what? To Honor whom? Seattle appears on territorial documents in 1853, when plats for the village were surveyed, and finally reincorporated with the seal of the City of Seattle, with a likeness of Chief Si’ahl in profile. Oh, him. But our Emerald City has never resonated around the world, as Doc Maynard’s anglicized renaming of Chief Seattle, for familiarity, was intended too.

So is it the name that is dragging us down? Seattle is after all the largest city in the United States named after a Native American leader. 3 to 2, notables over delirium. But like so many Indians we have long since forgotten, and paved over with our gum walls of history, Seattle is just not a very familiar sounding, or even easily pronounceable name. Sea-t-t-le, Se-at-tle? Sea-attle is the current native population’s mispronunciation of Say-attle, so frankly, it isn’t spelled correctly either.

“No Kidding,” said the voice from under the earth, as I stood at the foot of Chief Si’ahl gravesite on the Port Madison, Suquamish Indian Reservation, staring up at the newly added totems, for inspiration. Where I had come today, specifically to ask him why his namesake city had failed to resonate as far and wide as our coffee contrived, grunge-addled, rain induced delirium believes its six-hundred foot tall monument to a futuristic, UFO tripod, city destruction should be? I pulled out my airpods, and dropped my rain scorning umbrella, “Say what?”

Chief Si’ahl (See-all) told me he was the most venerable Chief of his time. That as a young boy he actually saw Captain Vancouver’s ships on the Salish Sea, anchoring at their summer village, known as Restoration Point. I laughed at this, as I had spent most of my own youth in this exact other-worldly place shaped by wind, sea, and earthquakes like no other around, as it seemed we’d actually grown up in the same neighborhood, walking on the same beach, skipping the same rocks. Si’ahl went on to recall epidemics that lost one third of his people, I showed him my pocketed covid mask, to which he laughed; As he told me that from the ashes and opportunities of their own pandemic, did he build a stronger alliance between the two Nations of his parents.

Chief Si’ahl continued to humblebrag about his courage, and leadership in battle, where once he faced down an invasion of warriors from the neighboring tribe, who he ambushed at a strategic point, defeating over a hundred warriors in five war canoes. After which a six tribal council met at Old Man House in Suquamish on Agate Pass, to choose Si’ahl as the new Chief in central Puget Sound. He was now as respected for his ways in battle, as in the peace his tribe greeted the Denny party with. Where they worked hard to protect these new people, who showed him equal respect. He provided guides, canoe transportation, and other assistance such as potatoes, salmon, and furs in trade. His tribe showed Denny how they burned down the forests for easier hunting, and felled trees for their longhouses.

Remembering my mission, I stepped back to consider the importance of this relatively unknown place, that helped me better understand the City of Seattle’s own failure as an equally unknown place. It wasn’t too foreign sounding a name, Seattle, I thought. It is just foreign enough sounding to be disregarded, and not foreign sounding enough to be memorable, I concluded. As is often the case with Anglicization, where the intention is to make words more palatable, but almost universally creates a foreign and awkward, body-snatcher-like clone with no notability due to its own daunting headwind. The name Seattle certainly looks English, but possesses none of the linguistic familiarity Latin obliges upon us. Say what you will about the word Sea, within Seattle, the rest of it is just over-anglicized garbage, disrespectfully paving over what took a second or two extra to properly understand. Where the importance is that respect be shown in the process of saying Si’ahl exactly as the Salish do, as through this effort you both learn and show respect for the benefit their diversity has to offer.

The solution to this English fail is that we de-anglicize our city’s name, where we might find greater significance by sticking to the namesake’s original spelling. With which our city might stick out like the six-hundred foot tall, tripod, squid-walker from Mars, poised to destroy all of Seattle, that we truly all know we are, or at least feel like we are after that fourth cup of the morning. So let our glory hogging Space Needle go forth and destroy the name, that a better one might be more notable amongst its peers New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Dallas, Houston, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Si’ahl, Miami, San Jose, Detroit, and Minneapolis. A name people will take note of, Si’ahl, as notability is defined by the importance of what it taught you, I recalled later, from something I had learned very early in life.

“The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites one family. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. The earth is sacred and men and animals are but one part of it. Treat the earth with respect so that it lasts for centuries to come and is a place of wonder and beauty for our children.” ~ Chief Si’ahl

And in that quote he responded to my vision quest. We identify as Seattleites, one family. We have destroyed this name, his name, to replace it with an awkward version of our own and suffered the consequences of middling mediocrity ever since. With the solution being to respect the roots of every family name equally to maintain diversity forever. His name wasn’t Seattle, this is not even close. His name, our city’s name, our metropolitan regional family’s name, is Si’ahl. And as he says, until this is respected, mediocrity will be ours. So do your worst squid-walker, destroy Seattle! If only in name. If only the City of Si’ahl is born from its ashes. If only all may see our city’s benefit of diversity as we do.