Governor Stevens confirmed his sachemship, and Seattle became the protector and the good genius of the town.  A curious legend, which seems to be well founded, is related of a tax which Seattle levied upon the new town, for the sake of the trouble that the name would give him in the spiritual world.  When a Dwamish Indian lost a near relative of the same name by death, he changed his own name, because the name might attract the ghost of the deceased, and so cause him to be haunted.  The tribe believed that departed spirits loved their old habitations, and the associations of their names and deeds, and so they changed their names and places on the death of relatives, that they might not be disturbed by ghostly apparitions.

“Why do you ask for a tax?” asked a pioneer of Seattle.

“The name of the town will call me back after I am dead, and make me unhappy.  I want my pay for what I shall suffer then, now.”

I hope that the rapid growth of the great city of the North does not disquiet the gentle and benevolent soul of Seattle.  The city should raise a monument to him, that he may see that he is kindly remembered when he comes back to visit the associations of his name and life.  Or, better for his shade, the city should kindly care for his daughter, poor old Angeline Seattle, who at the time of this writing (1890) is a beggar in the streets of uplifting commercial palaces and lovely homes!

We visited her in her hut outside of the city some months ago, to ask her if she saved Seattle in 1855, by giving information to the pioneers that the woods around it were full of lurking Indians, bent on a plot to destroy it; for there is a legend that on that shadowy December night, when Seattle was in peril, and the council of Indian warriors met and resolved to destroy the town before morning, Jim, a friendly Indian, was present at the conference as a spy.  He found means to warn the pioneers of their immediate danger.

The ship of war Decatur, under Captain Gansevoort, lay in the harbor.  Jim, who had acted in the Indian council, secretly, in the interest of the town, had advised the chiefs to defer the attack until early in the morning, when the officers of the Decatur would be off their guard.

[Illustration:  Middle block-house at the Cascades.]

Night fell on the Puget Sea.  The people went into the block-house to sleep, and the men of the Decatur guarded the town, taking their stations on shore.  As the night deepened, a thousand hostile Indians crept up to the place and awaited the morning, when the guard should go on board the ship for breakfast, and the people should come out of the block-house and go to their houses, and “set the gun behind the door.”

It was on this night, according to the legend, that “Old Angeline,” as she is now called, became the messenger that saved the inhabitants from destruction.

The legend has been doubted; and when we asked the short, flat-faced old woman, as she answered our knock, if she was the daughter of the chief who saved Seattle, she simply said, “Chief,” grinned, and made a bow.  She was ready to accept the traditional honors of the wild legend worthy of the pen of a Cooper.