If I told you there was an American territory
whose founding economy was actively propped up
by brothels. Right. And where a sick judge once
literally paddled a canoe to a shootout with
a rogue governor. Yeah, that actually happened.
And where progressive labor unions organized
violent ethnic cleansing. You probably wouldn't
immediately think of the rainy coffee obsessed
Pacific Northwest. You definitely wouldn't. But
today our mission is to explore a really comprehensive
historical overview of Washington state. We're
drawing this directly from Wikipedia's incredibly
detailed historical archives. We are going to
shortcut your path to being totally well informed
about how this remote. isolated corner of the
map evolved. We'll track how it went from ancient,
wealthy, indigenous societies into a modern hotbed
of political rebellion, giant monopolies, and
fierce civil rights battles. It really is a staggering
transformation. And what makes this source document
so compelling isn't just the massive timeline
of dates. It's the recurring theme of radical
social experiments. I mean, from the very beginning,
you see people constantly clashing over land,
over resources, and over the fundamental definition
of who actually belongs there. OK, let's unpack
this. Because the sheer scale of the history
here. is massive. We are talking about human
habitation dating back 13 ,000 years. Easily
13 ,000, yeah. Long before Euro -Americans ever
showed up, anthropologists estimate there were
125 distinct tribes in this region speaking 50
different languages and dialects. And we have
incredible archaeological evidence of just how
complex that world was. Oh yeah. Like the Osette
site. Exactly. At Osette, which is up in the
northwest corner of the state, an entire ancient
village was buried by a mudslide. This was triggered
by an earthquake roughly 500 years ago. So it's
essentially an ancient Pacific Northwest Pompeii.
Yeah. Just instantly locking all that history
and daily life perfectly in place. That is a
great way to look at it. Researchers have cataloged
more than 50 ,000 well -preserved artifacts from
that single site alone. Wow. 50 ,000. Yeah, it's
massive. But what's fascinating here is the sheer
economic diversity among these early cultures.
The geography of the region naturally divided
them, which created completely different socioeconomic
systems. Okay, how so? Well, you had the coastal
tribes like the Chinook and the Maka. They had
incredibly abundant resources. I mean, salmon,
halibut, and they even hunted whales. And because
they could dry and store that massive surplus
of food, it essentially acted as currency, right?
Exactly. Which led to private wealth. I have
to say that challenges the assumption a lot of
people have. We don't always associate pre -colonial
societies with private wealth and strict economic
hierarchies. Right. But they absolutely had it.
And that private wealth actually encouraged very
strict gender divisions. Really? Yeah. Because
there was so much aggressive competition and
captive taking among the wealthy coastal tribes
to maintain that status, the men primarily focused
on warring. Meanwhile, the women took on highly
prominent roles as traders, managing and growing
that wealth. But then you look to the east. at
the Plateau tribes, and it is a completely different
social structure. Entirely different. The Plateau
tribes lived in a much harsher environment. They
relied on seasonal hunting, fishing, and gathering.
So just a lot more work to get by. Exactly. The
sheer caloric workload to simply survive was
immense, which meant both men and women had to
share the food gathering duties equally. Oh,
wow. Because everyone's labor was literally keeping
the community alive, it naturally evolved into
a highly egalitarian in society based on shared
labor. And we know this stood out to early Euro
-Americans, because when the Lewis and Clark
expedition arrived in 1805, Meriwether Lewis
specifically wrote about it in his journal. He
was completely shocked by the unusually high
status of women and the elderly in these tribes.
He actually hypothesized that their social equality
was directly linked to this evenly distributed
economic role. Right, and he was observing a
socioeconomic mechanism that had been functioning
for centuries. It just proves that this region
wasn't some, you know, empty wilderness waiting
to be discovered. It was already hosting dynamic,
sophisticated societies long before colonists
arrived. But of course, that immense natural
wealth, the endless salmon, the furs, the towering
timber, it doesn't stay a secret forever. Unfortunately
not. Which brings us to an incredibly messy geopolitical
land grab. By the late 1700s and early 1800s,
you have this chaotic mix of Spanish, Russian,
British, and American ships all probing the coastline.
It was essentially a multi -empire pileup. And
the United States and Britain, trying to avoid
a full -scale war over the territory, initially
agreed to jointly occupy the region in 1818.
Which honestly sounds like a terrible roommate
situation. How do two competing empires just
share a massive territory? Well, functionally,
it was a geopolitical staring contest. Both empires
agreed to leave the borders open, secretly hoping
they could just out -populate the other side
with their own citizens. Claim the land by default.
Exactly. But it led to bizarre border conflicts.
At one point, tensions over the exact boundary
line on the San Juan Islands resulted in the
1859 Pig War. The Pig War. Yeah, it literally
started over an American shooting a British -owned
pig that was rooting in his garden. That is wild.
And it escalated so quickly with local military
forces that it almost sparked a war between two
global superpowers over a pig. And the geopolitical
scheming didn't stop with farm animals. During
the American Civil War, British Governor James
Douglas up in British Columbia actually proposed
that the British Royal Navy invade and seize
Washington territory. He really did. His logic
was basically, hey, the U .S. is distracted fighting
itself. The troops are gone. Let's just sail
down and take it. Britain ultimately declined
his proposal so as not to risk a larger war with
the U .S. But it highlights just how tenuous
the American grip on this land really was. And
the people who were actually settling this contested
land were incredibly diverse. It wasn't just,
you know, monolithic groups of white pioneers
in covered wagons. Not at all. Early fur traders
have been partnering with native women for decades,
creating a large established Métis or mixed race
population. And then. In 1846, the settlement
of Tumwater was founded by George Washington
Bush, a Black pioneer. Who moved his family all
the way from Missouri to the Pacific Northwest.
Wait, let me get this timeline straight. He moved
in 1846. Yes. That is well before the Civil War.
How is a Black pioneer navigating the frontier?
when neighboring territories were legally hostile
to his very existence. That is the crucial detail
here. He traveled there specifically to escape
the racist settlement laws of the neighboring
Oregon Territory. Oh, wow. Yeah, Oregon literally
passed laws banning black people from residing
there under threat of public whipping. So Bush
pushes further north into Washington, where the
lack of formal government meant a lack of formal
racial exclusion. Meanwhile... Over in early
Seattle, which was originally called Dewamps,
you have city founder Doc Maynard. and Doc Maynard
actively supported well -run prostitution as
a foundational pillar of the local economy. He
did. He realized that the town was populated
mostly by single young male loggers and miners
who had cash but nowhere to spend it. Right.
By supporting organized brothels, he ensured
that money stayed circulating within the local
economy rather than leaving the territory. He
was functionally dropping up the early settlements
infrastructure. Okay, I have to jump in here.
because we picture pioneers as these puritanical
groups taming the frontier. Sure. But here we
have a Black founder deliberately escaping racist
laws, a major city being funded by brothels,
and a British governor plotting a sneak attack.
Was there any actual law and order here? The
reality is that extreme geographical isolation
forced a very unique pragmatism. When you are
thousands of miles from the federal government,
cut off by the Rocky Mountains, you have to rely
on the people immediately around you to survive.
Regardless of their background or profession.
Exactly. It created strange political alliances
and a very deep sense of local autonomy. But
that pragmatic, live and let live attitude was
about to collide violently with federal authority.
Enter Governor Isaac Stevens in the 1850s. If
isolation bred pragmatism, Stevens was the exact
opposite. Here's where it gets really interesting.
Because Stevens was hawkish, he was authoritarian,
and he was federally appointed. He wasn't elected
by the locals. And his primary mandate was to
secure the land for American settlement. He accomplished
this through a series of rapid treaties that
essentially coerced tribes into giving up their
ancestral lands and moving to designated reservations.
But treaties on paper rarely hold up against
greed. In 1855, gold is discovered on the newly
established Yakama reservation. Always gold.
Always. White miners immediately flood the area,
ignoring the treaties completely. And this sparks
a brutal series of conflicts known generally
as the Indian Wars from 1855 to 1858. The violence
was systemic and devastating. Chief Leshy of
the Niskaly tribe refused to accept the Treaty
of Medicine Creek, which demanded his people
cede their lands. Right. He pulled out of negotiations,
which sparked the Puget Sound War. And Leshy
was eventually captured and executed by the territorial
government for murder. But the trial was incredibly
controversial. Because his defense argued a crucial
legal distinction. that the killing of a militia
man occurred during active combat, making it
an act of war, not a civil murder. Exactly. The
first trial actually ended in a hung jury because
locals understood that distinction. It wasn't
until a second trial under intense political
pressure that he was convicted. Wow. In fact,
the legal foundation of his conviction was so
flawed that Chief Leshy was formally exonerated
by a historical court in 2014. But what Governor
Stevens did during this war to maintain control
is just mind -blowing. He suspected that some
of the local citizens, specifically former Hudson's
Bay Company men who had married Native women,
he thought they were covertly aiding the Native
tribes. Yes. So to arrest them without due process,
Stevens unilaterally declares martial law. He
completely suspends the functions of all civil
officers in Pierce County, which prompts Chief
Territorial Justice Francis Chenoweth to try
and stop Stevens by issuing a writ of habeas
corpus for the prisoners. And for those unfamiliar
with the term, a writ of habeas corpus is basically
a fundamental legal demand that the government
prove it has a valid lawful reason to hold someone
in jail. You can't just lock people up on suspicion.
Right. But Stevens ignores the law completely
and actually sends soldiers to arrest the judge.
This part is wild. Chenoweth, who is recovering
from a severe illness at the time, literally
paddles a canoe from Whidbey Island all the way
to Pierce County to physically hold court. Paddling
a canoe while sick. Yes. He shows up. backed
by a 50 -man local militia to fight off the governor's
federal troops. They have an armed standoff at
the courthouse. This raises an important question,
though. When you look at that standoff, you are
literally watching the DNA of Washington state
being forged in real time. How so? That intense
hatred of federal overreach, it starts right
there. The citizens viewed the federal government
as overbearing and completely out of touch with
local realities. That anti -authoritarian sentiment
was forged at Dunpoint during this era of martial
law. And that intense distrust didn't just fade
away. It seamlessly morphed into a massive statewide
populist explosion a few decades later. Right.
By the 1880s and 1890s, the enemy wasn't an authoritarian
governor anymore. It was massive corporate monopolies
like the railroads, specifically the Northern
Pacific Railroad, which controlled vast amounts
of land and entirely dictated the economic life
of the local farmers and workers by controlling
shipping rates. So in response to this corporate
strength, hold. This radical third party called
the People's Party explodes in popularity. The
populace. Yeah. They swept into power with this
massive almost utopian list of progressive reforms.
They wanted to bust the monopolies. They fought
for equal pay regardless of race or sex. They
pushed for women's suffrage. Very progressive
for the time. In 1895, populist governor John
Rogers tasked the Barefoot Schoolboy Act, which
guaranteed basic education funding for every
child. rich or poor, by ensuring the state taxed
corporate wealth to pay for local schools. On
paper, it looks incredible. But of course, when
you dig into the historical reality from the
sources, it is much, much darker. There is a
violently exclusionary side to this populist
labor movement. And this is where the history
takes a really grim turn, because this same populist
movement was virulently anti -Asian. Yes. The
wealthy capitalists and railroad barons were
importing cheap Chinese labor to work the mines
and lay the tracks. OK. And the white working
class, who made up the base of this populist
movement, reacted to this economic pressure with
horrific racial violence. In 1885, vigilante
groups in Tacoma forcefully expelled all 700
Chinese Americans from the city. They dragged
them from their homes and burned their businesses
to the ground. A year later. In 1886, a violent
mob tried to do the exact same thing in Seattle.
The Seattle riot descended into absolute anarchy.
The mob was going door to door, kidnapping Chinese
residents to force them onto boats out of the
city. But in Seattle, there was armed pushback.
Sheriff John McGraw actually led a local militia
called the Seattle Rifles to protect the captured
Chinese citizens. Yeah, that was a huge moment.
They physically barged through the mob to take
the victims into protective custody, and it resulted
in a shootout in the streets. The territorial
governor had to declare martial law again. just
to quell the violence. But the tragic reality
is that despite these efforts, many Chinese residents
were still illegally deported. And the political
fallout reveals a lot. The politicians like Sheriff
McGraw and the mayor, who tried to protect the
Chinese citizens, were swiftly voted out of office
in the next election. Wait, I really need to
pause here. So the exact same political party
that was fighting for women's suffrage, universal
education and equal pay was simultaneously organizing
violence ethnic cleansing. How does that even
compute? It is a stark paradox, but we have to
look at how economic fear was weaponized according
to the historical accounts. The labor movements
in Washington during the 1880s were entirely
focused on protecting white working class interests
against the crushing weight of corporate monopolies.
They did not view Asian immigrants as fellow
workers in the struggle for labor rights because
the Chinese laborers were deliberately brought
in by the wealthy elite to break strikes and
undercut local wages. So they blame the laborers.
Exactly. The white working class viewed them
purely as tools of the capitalists. The progressive
ideals of equality simply did not extend across
racial lines. It's a chilling reminder of how
easily economic anxiety can be misdirected. So
how does a territory with that kind of intense
racial violence somehow go on to become a pioneer
for civil rights in the 20th century? It was
a gradual, hard -fought transformation driven
by massive economic shifts. As we move into the
20th century, World War II acts as a massive
catalyst. Because of the industrial boom. Yeah.
You have Boeing aircraft, sprawling shipyards,
and the Hanford Works, which brought in thousands
of workers to produce the plutonium for the Fat
Man atomic bomb. And this industrial boom completely
rewired the demographics. With so many men drafted,
the industrial machine desperately needed labor.
One -fourth of the shipyard laborers were women.
And because the factories literally could not
function if mothers were at home, this led to
one of the first government -funded workplace
child care centers in the country. That wartime
boom brought highly diverse populations into
the cities, which laid the critical groundwork
for the civil rights movements of the 1960s and
70s. Like what happened with Wing Luke. Exactly.
In 1962, Wing Luke became the first Asian -American
to hold office in the Pacific Northwest, and
he successfully fought to pass an open housing
ordinance. And that was a legal mechanism that
made it illegal to refuse to sell or rent a house
to someone based on their race. Right. Directly
combating the practice of redlining. And then
you have the fish wars, which is such a powerful
chapter. Native American activists were fighting
against commercial fishing companies and state
regulations that were eroding their treaty rights.
Right. Leaders like Billy Frank Jr. of the Niskoli
tribe and Bernie White Bear organized what they
called fish in protests. Like sit ins. Mirroring
the sit ins of the civil rights movement. Yeah.
They would intentionally fish in contested waters
getting arrested. publicly to force the courts
to actually enforce the rights guaranteed to
them back in the 1850s. The very treaties Isaac
Stevens forced upon them. And their strategy
worked. Their activism resulted in the landmark
1974 bolt decision by the US Supreme Court, which
legally reaffirmed their right to fish in their
traditional waters. It was huge. And to show
you Just how much the narrative has shifted over
time in 2021, Washington passed a law to replace
the state's statue of a white missionary in the
U .S. Capitol with a statue of Billy Frank Jr.
It's a profound reclaiming of history. And this
era also saw the rise of the Gang of Four in
Seattle. Who really? This was Bernie White Bear,
Bob Santos, Roberta Maestas and Larry Gossett.
They formed a radical, uniquely multiracial coalition
of Native American, Asian American, Latino, and
Black activists. Which is incredible because
historically, marginalized groups were often
pitted against each other to compete for the
same small pool of government grants. But they
realized that fighting each other for crumbs
was exactly what the establishment wanted. So
instead, they united. They literally occupied
abandoned schools together to build community
centers and shared resources to demand a seat
at the table. And that progressive momentum kept
building. In 2006, Washington passed gay and
lesbian anti -discrimination laws, surviving
a fierce conservative pushback at the ballot
box. And today, the state is home to modern mega
-monopolies. We're talking Microsoft, Amazon,
Starbucks. So what does this all mean? How does
a state go from being dominated by Boeing monopolies
to having 40 ,000 anarchists and labor unions
shutting down the streets to protest the World
Trade Organization in 1999? If we connect this
to the bigger picture, the entire history of
Washington state has been defined by this exact
tension, the push and pull. It is a perpetual
battleground between massive consolidated corporate
power, starting with the Hudson's Bay Company,
evolving into the Northern Pacific Railroad and
now modern global tech giants and radical grassroots
organizers who fundamentally refuse to be dictated
to. It really is an incredible cycle. So to recap
our journey for you today, we started with. the
deeply egalitarian Plateau tribes whose survival
depended on shared labor. Right. We navigated
the hawkish overreach of Governor Stevens and
the pushback of a sick judge paddling a canoe
to defend the rule of law. We waded through the
dark paradox of the People's Party, where progressive
labor ideals collided with horrific, misdirected
anti -Asian violence. And we ended with the inspiring
multiracial coalitions and the bolt decision,
proving that the fight for who belongs in this
landscape is always evolving. Understanding these
extreme historical swings is absolutely the key
to understanding the modern Pacific Northwest.
And I want to leave you with one final thought
to mull over. Sure. Since the 1840s, from George
Washington Bush traversing the country to escape
racist laws, to the 1890s populist fighting railroads
all the way to modern tech visionaries dreaming
up the future people have deliberately traveled
to this isolated corner of the map to build their
own radical version of utopia. Does the extreme
geographic isolation of the Pacific Northwest,
trapped between the imposing Cascade Mountains
and the vast Pacific Ocean, naturally act as
an incubator for people who want to completely
rewrite the rules of civilization? That is a
fascinating question to leave on. Thank you so
much for joining us on this deep dive. We hope
you walk away seeing the evergreen state in a
whole new light. Keep questioning, keep learning,
and we will catch you next time.