Long before the Space Needle, Seattle had a human symbol that graced souvenir postcards, plates, stained-glass windows and silver teaspoons. It was someone who connected the changing city with its roots.
She had a face lined with signs of a hard and determined life — but also dignity. It was a face many embraced.
Her name was Kikisoblu.
Her father was Chief Seattle.
Meet the woman who was dubbed: Princess Angeline.
She was the eldest daughter of the Duwamish and Suquamish Chief Seattle, the reluctant namesake of the city who did more than any other to make the city possible. Kikisoblu was born near Pritchard Island on Lake Washington in what is now Rainier Beach. The year of her birth is unknown, but was probably in the early 19th century. She lived into her 70s or 80s.
Pioneers remembered her in the early days as beautiful and full of spirit. An early marriage did not work for her, so she left it. She lived and worked in the budding settlement of Seattle and forged ties with many pioneer households. She did laundry for many of them. It was David “Doc” Maynard’s wife Catherine who wanted to give her a name worthy of the inherited status from her father. Thus, she became known as Princess Angeline.
She was a devout Catholic, like her father who’d converted. She could be seen on Seattle streets with her rosary. She walked around the growing town barefoot often wearing calico dresses, large plaid shawls, with her head covered by brightly colored kerchiefs. She lived humbly at the foot of Pike Street in a shack amid a collection of shanties. That she lived in Seattle at all is a testament to her determination. The city had banned Indigenous people from living within it and forcibly expelled and displaced many of them. Angeline did not want to leave her birthplace.
In the latter years of her life, Angeline became an object of fascination. She was revered but also ridiculed. Young boys jeered her as the bent woman who walked the streets where she had once sat weaving baskets for sale. But she fought back — sometimes throwing rocks and clams at the harassing boys and complaining to the police. She did not spare them her tongue.
There was great interest in her story, her presence and the high regard in which she was held by old Seattle’s pioneers, like Henry Yesler, Arthur Denny and Maynard. Stories circulated that she’d helped save the town from the attack called the Battle of Seattle in 1856, but her role was more legend than fact. She was outspoken and stood up for herself, once lecturing local church women “with eyes aflame,” according to one witness, while pointing at a map to the domain that once was the Duwamish’s — and her father’s — demanding this not be forgotten. Chief Seattle biographer David Buerge told me that some consider Angeline “the first protester.”
Age and poverty took their toll. At times she was seen weeping in the street. Her health faltered. She relied on the goodwill of people, particularly old friends, for support. But she often is said to have refused outright charity. Wealthy Henry Yesler said Angeline was so generous that if you gave her “$50 she would give it all away before night.”
Seattle was changing, growing and urbanizing. In the 1890s, the survivors of Seattle’s earliest days were starting to dwindle. Some whites referred to her as a “living monument to the past.”
It was then that she attracted more attention from photographers. One was young Edward S. Curtis. He approached her and paid $1 a piece for three images. Her portrait and images of her clamming and gathering mussels were the first pictures he took for his epic work recording North American Indigenous peoples.
Her picture was spread on postcards and tchotchkes countless times. Northwest photography historian Tim Greyhavens says her image was Washington’s “first meme.” Some booming cities chose to be represented by manmade structures like bridges or thrusting sky lines. But Angeline’s face was the face of the city. Frederick & Nelson sold chinaware with her on it; stained glass windows of her were crafted for the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. A woman mentalist, magician and vaudeville performer said she could conjure her image on stage out of thin air.
Some scoffed that someone who looked like Angeline could be a princess and found her ugly. A travel writer, in one of his less offensive observations, said her face had “more wrinkles than a washboard.” But a letter-writer to the Post-Intelligencer in 1891 had a different view: “I am an English woman, and as a loyal British subject I of course admire and respect all real live princesses, but permit me to state that I honestly feel more sympathy and admiration for poor Princess Angeline than for any royal princess of England.”
She died of consumption and old age in 1896 and was buried in a canoe-shaped coffin in Lake View Cemetery along with so many of the city’s pioneers she knew.
About Angeline’s image, author Timothy Egan concluded, “To look at the face and not see humanity is to lack humanity.” Cecile Hansen, chair of the Duwamish today, a people still fighting for tribal recognition, says the word she associates with Angeline is “resilience.”
Like the Duwamish, she is still here. The Duwamish hold an annual Princess Angeline Tea fundraiser at their longhouse in West Seattle. Other contemporary tributes exist: An Orca is honored with the name Angeline and her offspring is named Kiki. Some have even proposed Angeline for sainthood. It is said she haunts Pike Place Market today, built on the site of her home.
In her father’s famous speech, the chief warned that throngs of his people would make their spirit known to us on Seattle nights. “The white man will never be alone,” he said. Angeline — Kikisoblu — reminds us of that truth.
