Chief Leschi

AKA: Leschi of the Nisqually
Full name:Leschi Leschi
Date of birth:1808
Date of death:19. 02. 1858
Age:50† Deceased
Gender:Male
Race:Native American
Era:1800s
State:Washington
Support
Indigenous Sovereignty
No image available

Biography

Chief Leschi was a Nisqually leader who resisted Governor Isaac Stevens's coercive 1854 Treaty of Medicine Creek and led Native resistance in the Puget Sound War of 1855–56. Captured in late 1856, he was tried for the wartime killing of a militiaman; after a first trial ended in a hung jury, a second convicted him, and he was hanged on February 19, 1858 — a prosecution widely condemned as an act of war wrongly tried as murder. A historical court symbolically exonerated him in 2004. The treaty he resisted is the same one later invoked by the Nisqually fishing-rights fighters.

Note: Birth year approximate (circa 1808).

Case

Charges: Charged with murder.
Released: Feb 19, 1858
Sentence: Death by hanging, carried out February 19, 1858, after about a year in jail and two trials. Verdict as recorded: Convicted at a second trial after the first ended in a hung jury. Charges as recorded: Charged with murder for a killing during the Puget Sound War (1855–56) — widely held to be an act of war improperly prosecuted as a crime.
Convicted: Yes