Sometimes, doing the right thing also brings added benefits — and that’s exactly what’s happening with an exciting new initiative at Fort Steilacoom Park.
Let’s unroll some background to explain why. The park gets its name from an actual US Army fort, whose surviving 170-year-old buildings stand across Steilacoom Boulevard on the ‘front lawn’ of Western State. You can learn more about the museum here: https://historicfortsteilacoom.org/
But even before that – the park was the site of two British farms, back when this area was owned by a British company, in the 1840s.
But even before that – this entire area was the homeland of Native Americans for oh, roughly 13,000 years.
I mean, I often feel my age these days, but 13,000 years is even older than me! Now we’re talking about some serious history.
A nature trail for Fort Steilacoom Park
The relationship between those different land uses is a subject far beyond the scope of a letter in The Suburban Times. I hope to write about a variety of topics related to history. Today we write about an action item.
The plan comes from the Lakewood Parks & Rec Department, where they want to create a trail in one corner of the park dedicated to its prairie past – and to Chief Leschi.
The subject of Leschi also goes beyond the scope of a letter in The Suburban Times. Let’s just summarize that he was the victim of a corrupt civilian court system in Olympia that tried him for a crime that didn’t exist and actions that he didn’t take. He was “legally lynched” by civilian court order near the shores of Lake Steilacoom in 1858.
What is his connection to Lakewood, you ask? Here’s the background: His brother had been arrested before Leschi. Leschi’s brother was murdered in Olympia which was a very different place then – Olympia was where you went if you wanted to hang out with people who thought slavery was great and murder of Native Americans was part of settlement.
Leschi’s supporters, who included US Army officers, didn’t want him held in Olympia to suffer the same fate as his brother.
Leschi’s path
To prevent Leschi from being murdered before or during trial, US Army officers agreed to hold him at Fort Steilacoom during his two trials in Olympia. Leschi thus spent the last months of his life at roughly the spot that today is where you turn into the driveway of Western State Hospital, the site of the fort guardhouse. His confinement space is now parking slots for DSHS employees.
Going to and from trial, he would have often passed the area that Lakewood will mark as a trail in his honor.
Leschi had a long life as a community leader, and it’s part of what the trail will celebrate along with flora and fauna and so many aspects of history and heritage. The Lakewood City Council recently issued a proclamation that celebrates Native heritage and this parks partnership. This is how the project is described in the proclamation:
Whereas, the City and the Nisqually Indian Tribe are engaged in a collaborative partnership to develop interpretive installations on public lands within the city that feature the unique culture and history of the Nisqually Indian Tribe;
Whereas, a project at Fort Steilacoom Park to add Native art and cultural interpretive markers along the 1.7-mile Nisqually Loop Trail will include descriptions of traditional uses of the area, information about the Nisqually Tribe, Chief Leschi’s legacy, and Lushootseed language…
If you have a few minutes, you can watch a brief ceremony from Nov. 4 when members of the Lakewood Youth Council read the proclamation in front of both the Lakewood City Council and the Nisqually Tribal Council. The video is here:
The benefits of this trail
I mentioned that not only is the trail the right thing to do, but it has another benefit. I want to stress that the reason for a prairie memorial trail is to celebrate what Fort Steilacoom Park looked like for thousands of years. And the other reason for the trail is to honor the past and present of Leschi and other Native Americans.
But here’s the other benefit of doing the right thing:
This is a great way to insulate the park from further development.
Look, I love all the things in the park. Genuine bathrooms, ballfields, playgrounds, an amphitheater with meeting space, signage, and oh did we mention the lake trail and gazebo and remnants of the Western State Hospital patient farm. I love that there are plans to save the barns and turn them into a gathering space, because that park is a great space to gather.
There are A LOT of things that have gone into the park in recent years.
You can sometimes love a park too much. You can easily imagine every corner of that park packed with public art, more and more and more paved gathering spaces, buildings and play spaces with this focus, or that focus, and frankly, wonderful things. Service clubs and cities and organizations love to build things for the public good. Totally appreciate that.
But in installing all those things, we lose the sense of Fort Steilacoom as a wild place. Some of us can remember when you could stand in the middle of the park and know there was a prairie here.
It’s getting much harder to feel that way now.
Preserving a sense of ‘prairie’
The Nisqually project is a remarkable initiative because creating a trail dedicated to a prairie inherently means preserving that area as a prairie. For those of us who value Lakewood’s history, that’s a gift. After all, the park was a prairie for far longer than it’s been a developed recreational space. Part of it should remain wild and untouched.
How could anyone justify further development in an area specifically designated as a prairie? It’s hard to imagine anyone proposing a large, intrusive project right next to an interpretive sign highlighting the cultural significance of Camas bulbs growing there.
There’s a beautiful symmetry here. For thousands of years, Native peoples hunted and gathered on these prairies. Now, through this project, aspects of Native heritage are helping to preserve Fort Steilacoom Park.
It feels as if something greater than us is watching over this land, ensuring its legacy endures. This project sets us on a path to preserve at least one part of the park in its most natural state for the 2020s and beyond. Those who came before us would honor that choice. So should we.
This is such an informative and important letter, Mr. Neary. Thank you for giving us some history and asking us to be careful of loving the park “too much”. Those who enjoyed the park before the dog park and any improvements were made remember that true prairie experience. As we walked through tall grasses, pheasants and rabbits were plentiful. It is no longer the same experience. I miss it. However, the improvements made have opened up this park so many more citizens can access and enjoy it; there has to be give and take.
I am excited to hear about the Nisqually Loop Trail and the honoring of Chief Leschi and the Nisqually Indian Tribe. I can see families walking that trail and explaining Native American history to their children. This is a wonderful educational project and I applaud our city for moving forward.
Thank you for bringing this history to our attention. Perhaps, the memorial to Chief Leschi could also be relocated from the easily overlooked place in a strip mall to one of prominence in the Park?
It’s a heck of an idea, Will, well worthy of consideration. The monument was put there, I think, because that shopping center used to be the center of that area (when people were first dreaming there would be something we now call Oakbrook). In 1963, that shopping center was shiny new stuff.
The actual site where Leschi was hung is now someone’s front yard, so we can see why they didn’t put it there.
If anyone is interested in this topic of sites, former TNT columnist Peter Callaghan wrote an interesting piece about the Leschi hanging location. If you’re interested, you can find his piece by Googling these terms: peter callaghan leschi hanging site court
Look for the link on the Washington State Courts site.
My own take on this is that it’s the Nisqually Tribe that’s best positioned to discuss and deliberate on appropriate memorials. You put your finger on something though, that in 2024, the 1963 memorial shows age. It does at least show when people were thinking in a more holistic, humane way about what was going on here in the 1850s.
Boom! Nailed it in one. Well done, Mister Neary!
Thank you for reminding people about the past: the history, the people, and the interesting stories that began here.
Our history is important.
Thanks
K. Roberts
I love this idea but I thought this area was part of the Steilacoom Tribe and not the Nisqually? If you look on their website it looks like this was home to the Steilacoom Band or the Sastuck Band.
WH, Tribal historians can explain this better than me, and I’d love it if someone wanted to weigh in. Let me try. All these names we use today were imposed on bands of people by English and American authorities and later by federal court decisions for purposes of organization or worse. The people who named the tribes did it solely for their own organizational purposes that don’t line up neatly with what we think of as land boundaries.
Yes, there were members of what is now called the Steilacoom and Nisqually Tribes around here in the 1850s, but so were Puyallup and others. A sociologist who came through in the late 1930s, Marian Smith, interviewed tribal elders and found record of considerable cross-connections between the villages of what we now know as the Nisqually, Steilacoom and Puyallup.
Leschi, confined at the site, was considered Nisqually and held here, regardless of what other tribes were present in the immediate area.
The way a lot of people get around this complexity is to just say this was the home of Coast Salish peoples, though one Tribal historian told me that’s not very specific – it’s like describing a Washingtonian or Californian as “West Coast.”
And again, I’d welcome a Tribal historian to actually explain this, I’m just sharing my limited understanding.
Thank you for the info and explanation. I do hope someone can add specifics. It would be wonderful to know the true/accurate history of this specific area