| Battle of Port Gamble | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of American Indian Wars | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 United States | Tlingit tribe from Kake village, Alaska | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
 Samuel Swartout | unknown | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 1 killed | 27 killed, 21 wounded | ||||||
The Battle of Port Gamble was an isolated engagement between the United States and the Tlingit. It occurred during, but was not a part of, the Yakima War. Though a minor incident, it is historically notable for the first U.S. Navy battle death in the Pacific Ocean. [1] [2]
The Haida of British Columbia and Alaska and others had, since time immemorial, periodically conducted raiding expeditions against the Coast Salish peoples of the Puget Sound, who were used as a source for slave labor. Northwest Coast Native maritime technology was unsurpassed among First Nations peoples and raiding parties would travel in large dugout canoes at distances of up to a thousand miles. The largest of these canoes could hold 100 warriors and their equipment. These raids continued even after the demarcation of the border between the United States and Canada, then controlled by the United Kingdom. [3]
In November 1856 a Tlingit party, consisting of approximately 100 warriors and their accompanying families, entered Puget Sound in a fleet of canoes, in what was then the Washington Territory. When the force approached the town of Steilacoom, residents alerted the U.S. Army garrison at Fort Steilacoom who, in turn, sent word to the nearby U.S. Navy gunboat USS Massachusetts. However, before USS Massachusetts could arrive the Haida had already withdrawn north. [4]
On November 20 the Tlingit approached the logging community of Port Gamble, near which was located the Port Gamble Band of S’Klallam Indians some of the members of which worked at the nearby sawmill. Josiah Keller, superintendent of the mill, sounded the mill's whistle prompting the community to evacuate to a blockhouse that had been previously constructed for this eventuality. USS Massachusetts arrived at Port Gamble soon thereafter and, finding that the Haida party had landed and camped at the edge of town, placed a force of 18 armed sailors ashore. The skipper of USS Massachusetts, Commander Samuel Swartwout, twice sent messengers to the Tlingit chiefs with offers to tow them to Victoria, but each offer was rebuffed. The next morning, Swartwout began shelling the Haida camp with the deck guns of the Massachusetts, inflicting heavy casualties on the party before they managed to retreat to the forest. [5] During the Haida withdrawal, small arms fire was exchanged between the war party and USS Massachusetts' sailors, resulting in the death of coxswain Gustavus Engelbrecht, the only American casualty in the battle and the first U.S. Navy battle death in the Pacific. [6] The Haida having abandoned the field, the landing party from USS Massachusetts proceeded to destroy the beached Haida canoes and burn their provisions. [4] [7]
Two days later the surviving Haida surrendered. The Tlingit prisoners were issued a ration of bread and molasses and given 24 hours to bury their dead, after which they were taken aboard USS Massachusetts with the intention of deporting them to British Columbia. [4] When USS Massachusetts arrived in Victoria, however, British Columbia governor James Douglas objected to the landing of the Haida in the colony. In a dispatch sent to colonial secretary Henry Labouchère, Douglas described Swartwout's reaction, [8]
Captain Swartwout appeared disappointed and irritated at my decision, and somewhat inconsiderately held out a threat of landing his prisoners, with or without my sanction, on some of the uninhabited islets on our coast, but on being reminded that such a course, would be a breach of international law, and immediately become the subject of complaint to his Government, he apologized for the warmth into which he had been inadvertently betrayed.
Swartwout and Douglas eventually reached a compromise: the Tlingit were provisioned with food and new canoes, then dropped-off at the edge of Russian America. [8]
One of the Tlingit killed in the Battle of Port Gamble was a chief and, under Tlingit custom, a chief of the enemy had to be killed in revenge. On August 11, 1857, the Tlingit returned to Washington Territory, landing at Whidbey Island. After inquiring among settlers if there were any chiefs around, they determined that Isaac N. Ebey was the most important person on the island and shot and decapitated him, before departing for home with Ebey's head as a trophy. [A likeness of Ebey was carved on the front of a war helmet by a Kake Tlingit artist with Ebey's head as his model.]{Duane Pasco} [9] [10]
With increased policing of the Canada–United States border, Northern incursions into Washington steadily dropped in the years following the Battle of Port Gamble. Later incidents involving the Haida and United States tribes occurred in 1859 when Suquamish warriors repelled a Haida landing on the western shore of Bainbridge Island; a confrontation between the Snohomish and Tlingit in August 1860. [11]
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, officially Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility, is a United States Navy shipyard covering 179 acres (0.7 km2) on Puget Sound at Bremerton, Washington in uninterrupted use since its establishment in 1891; it has also been known as Navy Yard Puget Sound, Bremerton Navy Yard, and the Bremerton Naval Complex.
USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74), named for Senator John C. Stennis of Mississippi, is the seventh of the Nimitz-class of nuclear-powered supercarriers in the United States Navy.
Whidbey Island is the largest of the islands composing Island County, Washington, in the United States, and the largest island in Washington state. Whidbey is about 30 miles (48 km) north of Seattle, and lies between the Olympic Peninsula and the I-5 corridor of western Washington. The island forms the northern boundary of Puget Sound. It is home to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. The state parks and natural forests are home to numerous old growth trees.
Haida are an Indigenous group who have traditionally occupied Haida Gwaii, an archipelago just off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, for at least 12,500 years.
Fox Island is an island and census-designated place (CDP) in Pierce County, Washington, United States, in Puget Sound. It is located approximately 5 miles (8 km) from Gig Harbor. The island was named Fox by Charles Wilkes during the United States Exploring Expedition, to honor J.L. Fox, an assistant surgeon on the expedition. The population was 3,633 at the 2010 census.
The Klallampeople ; also Clallam, although the spelling with "K" is preferred in all four modern Klallam communities) are a Coast Salish people Indigenous to the northern Olympic Peninsula. The language of the Klallam is the Klallam language, a language closely related to the North Straits Salish languages. The Klallam are today citizens of four recognized bands: Three federally-recognized tribes in the United States and one band government in Canada. Two Klallam tribes, the Jamestown S'Klallam and Lower Elwha Klallam, live on the Olympic Peninsula, and one, the Port Gamble S'Klallam, on the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington state. In Canada, the Scia'new First Nation is based at Becher Bay on southern Vancouver Island in British Columbia.
The Kitsap Peninsula lies west of Seattle across Puget Sound, in Washington state in the Pacific Northwest. Hood Canal separates the peninsula from the Olympic Peninsula on its west side. The peninsula, a.k.a. "Kitsap", encompasses all of Kitsap County except Bainbridge and Blake Islands, as well as the northeastern part of Mason County and the northwestern part of Pierce County. The highest point on the Kitsap Peninsula is Gold Mountain. The U.S. Navy's Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, and Naval Base Kitsap are on the peninsula. Its main city is Bremerton.
USS Massachusetts was a steamer built in 1845 and acquired by the U.S. War Department in 1847. She was used by the U.S. Army as a transport during the Mexican–American War before being transferred to U.S. Navy Department in 1849. She traveled widely, including transiting Cape Horn several times as part of her official duties on both sides of the Americas. During her years of service she spent most of her time on the west coast of North America.
Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve is a unit of the National Park Service on Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound, near Coupeville in Island County, Washington, United States.
The Yakima War (1855–1858), also referred to as the Plateau War or Yakima Indian War, was a conflict between the United States and the Yakama, a Sahaptian-speaking people of the Northwest Plateau, then part of Washington Territory, and the tribal allies of each. It primarily took place in the southern interior of present-day Washington. Isolated battles in western Washington and the northern Inland Empire are sometimes separately referred to as the Puget Sound War and the Coeur d'Alene War, respectively.
Port Gamble is an unincorporated community on the northwestern shore of the Kitsap Peninsula in Kitsap County, Washington, United States. It is also a small, eponymous bay, along which the community lies, near the entrance to Hood Canal. The unincorporated communities of Port Gamble and Little Boston, part of Kitsap County, lie on the west and the east side, respectively, of the mouth of this bay. The Port Gamble Historic District, a U.S. National Historic Landmark, covers one of the nation's best-preserved western lumber towns.
The Puget Sound War was an armed conflict that took place in the Puget Sound area of the state of Washington in 1855–56, between the United States military, local militias and members of the Native American tribes of the Nisqually, Muckleshoot, Puyallup, and Klickitat. Another component of the war, however, were raiders from the Haida and Tlingit who came into conflict with the United States Navy during contemporaneous raids on the native peoples of Puget Sound. Although limited in its magnitude, territorial impact and losses in terms of lives, the conflict is often remembered in connection to the 1856 Battle of Seattle and to the execution of a central figure of the war, Nisqually Chief Leschi. The contemporaneous Yakima War may have been responsible for some events of the Puget Sound War, such as the Battle of Seattle, and it is not clear that the people of the time made a strong distinction between the two conflicts.
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The Nuku Hiva Campaign was an armed conflict between the United States and the Polynesian inhabitants of Nuku Hiva during the War of 1812. It occurred in 1813, following Captain David Porter's decision to sail his fleet to the island for repairs before continuing his raid against British shipping. Upon arrival, the Americans became involved in a tribal war and allied themselves with the Te I'i people against the Happah and Tai Pi clans.
The 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic was a smallpox outbreak that started in Victoria on Vancouver Island and spread among the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast and into the indigenous peoples of the Northwest Plateau, killing a large portion of natives from the Puget Sound region to Southeast Alaska. Two-thirds of British Columbia natives died—around 20,000 people. The death rate was highest in southeast Alaska and Haida Gwaii—over 70% among the Haida and 60% among the Tlingit. Almost all native nations along the coast, and many in the interior, were devastated, with a death rate of over 50% for the entire coast from Puget Sound to Sitka, Alaska, part of Russian America at the time. In some areas the native population fell by as much as 90%. The disease was controlled among colonists in 1862 but it continued to spread among natives through 1863.