Henry Sicade

Henry Sicade (February 12, 1866 - December 14, 1938) was a Puyallup and Nisqually educator, activist, politician, and community advocate who spent most of his life serving the Washington community. Henry Sicade was a member of the Puyallup Tribal Council for 46 years.

Early life Sicade was born February 12, 1866, in Lakeview, Washington Territory. Sicade is the grand-nephew of Chief Leschi.

In 1869, Sicade's family moved to Puyallup. He notes that students were often hungry, and many went without care or even died when measles swept the school.

Sicade's father died in 1879, prompting him to travel to Forest Grove, Oregon. Here he attended the Indian Training School, which would later move to Chemawa, Oregon and be renamed the Chemawa Indian School. He completed four years of work in three.

In 1886, following the orders of his doctor, Sicade joined a group of cowboys in Pasco in Eastern Washington. After some time with this group, he earned the position of advance scout, which had him going ahead of the other men to survey land.

Washington In 1886, upon learning of the introduction of the Dawes Act, Sicade traveled from Chicago to Tacoma, concerned about the security of his 122-acre lot that had been allotted to his parents under the Medicine Creek Treaty of 1854. Originally written 1917, this section provides Sicade's singular perspective on early relations between white settlers and Native Americans in Washington. The book frames Sicade's insights as representative of the opinions of other local Native Americans.

Non-natives also referred to Sicade about questions regarding indigenous nomenclature. In a 1916 history of Tacoma, Herbert Hunt briefly mentions Sicade to note that he has "[devoted] much attention to the preservation of the language."