Golden Potlatch

Called a "triumph of symbolism" by one observer, the Potlatch appropriated Native imagery to create a regional vision of civic development.

[3] The name derived from the potlatch, the Chinook Jargon name of a festival ceremony that had been practiced by indigenous peoples of the region; "golden" reflected Seattle's role in the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1890s.

The Portland carried the festival's presiding figure, King D'Oro, avatar of golden wealth, along with a retinue of hoary prospectors and rambunctious dancing girls.

[3] Roughly 300,000 people attended parades, concerts, automobile races up Queen Anne Hill, and an airplane piloted by United States Navy Lt. Eugene Ely.

[2] In 1911, Robert A. Reid, Seattle, published a number of postcards as part of his Pacific Northwest Photographic Series to publicize the Golden Potlatch.

[2] Capitalizing on Seattle's borrowed Indian heritage, city leaders cranked up the marketing machine to promote their version of Progress.

On the first day of the Potlatch some soldiers and sailors were involved in a fistfight when an IWW Industrial Workers of the World speaker supposedly 'insulted their uniforms'.

[1][5] A newspaper story the next day further inflamed the situation resulting in soldiers and sailors aided by civilians looting and burning the offices of the IWW and the Socialist Party.

[6] On July 19, 1913, Mayor George Cotterill, responding to street riots the previous evening during the Potlatch Days festival, declared an emergency, and assumed direct control of the police, closed saloons, banned street speakers, and attempted to temporarily close down The Seattle Times, which he believed provoked the riots.