COURTESY OF LARRY HOFFMAN

In the early 1890s Princes Angeline, Chief Seattle’s daughter, posed for this portrait on Pike Street just west of First Avenue. Pike was not yet raised there to the level that made the intersection the hallowed site on which our Public Farmer’s Market opened in 1907.

BY JEAN SHERRARD

THERE ARE probably dozens of photographs of Chief Seattle's daughter, but very few so candid as this one. And yet Princess Angeline probably agreed in an instant to sit for this portrait on the boardwalk beside Pike Street and a half block west of Front Street (First Avenue). She was, by all descriptions, not shy. Most likely she also expected to be paid a quarter for her modeling.

At the time Angeline was interrupted by the unnamed photographer, she may have been moving between her home near the waterfront foot of Pike Street and Charles Louch's grocery nearby at First and Union. In the early 1890s the Board of King County Commissioners instructed the prosperous English grocer to give Angeline whatever she needed and to pass the bills on to the county. The meager $1.25 bill for November 1891 included a pack of cigarettes, probably for her grandson, Joe Foster, who then lived with her.

Angeline also moved into a new cabin in 1891 built for her by another pioneer neighbor, the lumberman Amos Brown. Two years earlier, she received her greatest celebrity with a drawing and description in the popular national magazine Harper's Weekly. The Harper's correspondent, Hezekiah Butterworth, seems to be imagining a caption for this photograph when he writes, "Her flat, tan-colored face, fiery black eyes and black hair are a familiar picture in the streets of the new city, where she sits down daily on some log or shoe box to marvel at all that is going on."

Larry Hoffman, my friend and oft-times instructor, introduced me to this portrait at a gathering for his 98th birthday at Hamilton House, the senior center in the University District. Thanks, Larry.

Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.