The text was produced by one "Dr." Smith, an early settler in
Seattle, who took notes as Seattle spoke in the Suquamish dialect
of central Puget sound Salish (Lushootseed), and created this
text in English from those notes. Smith insisted that his version
"contained none of the grace and elegance of the original" The
last two sentences of the text here given have been considered for
many years to have been part of the original, but are now known to
have been added by an early 20th C. historian and ethnographic
writer, A. C. Ballard.
There are many versions and excerpts from this text, including a
wholly fraudulent version mentioning buffalo and the
interconnectedness of all life which was written by a Hollywood
screenwriter in the late 70's and which has gained wide currency.
The bogus version has been quoted by individuals as prominent and
diverse as former U.S. President Bush and Joseph Campbell.
At the time this speech was made it was commonly believed by
whites and as well by many Indians that Native americas would
inevitalby become extinct.
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Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for
centuries untold, and which to us appears changeless and eternal,
may change. Today is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with
clouds. My words are like the stars that never change. Whatever
Seattle says, the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as
much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun or the
seasons. The white chief says that Big Chief at Washington sends
us greetings of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him for
we know he has little need of our friendship in return. His
people are many. They are like the grass that covers vast
prairies. My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees
of a storm-swept plain. The great, and I presume -- good, White
Chief sends us word that he wishes to buy our land but is willing
to allow us enough to live comfortably. This indeed appears just,
even generous, for the Red Man no longer has rights that he need
respect, and the offer may be wise, also, as we are no longer in
need of an extensive country.
There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of
a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long
since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a
mournful memory. I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our
untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening
it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame.
Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or
imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it
denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel
and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to
restrain them. Thus it has ever been. Thus it was when the white
man began to push our forefathers ever westward. But let us hope
that the hostilities between us may never return. We would have
everything to lose and nothing to gain. Revenge by young men is
considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old me
who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to
lose, know better.
Our good father in Washington--for I presume he is now our father
as well as yours, since King George has moved his boundaries
further north--our great and good father, I say, sends us word
that if we do as he desires he will protect us. His brave
warriors will be to us a bristling wall of strength, and his
wonderful ships of war will fill our harbors, so that our ancient
enemies far to the northward -- the Haidas and Tsimshians -- will
cease to frighten our women, children, and old men. The in
reality he will be our father and we his children. But can that
ever be? Your God is not our God! Your God loves your people and
hates mine! He folds his strong protecting arms lovingly about
the paleface and leads him by the hand as a father leads an infant
son. But, He has forsaken His Red children, if they really are
His. Our God, the Great Spirit, seems also to have forsaken us.
Your God makes your people wax stronger every day. Soon they will
fill all the land. Our people are ebbing away like a rapidly
receding tide that will never return. The white man's God cannot
love our people or He would protect them. They seem to be orphans
who can look nowhere for help. How then can we be brothers? How
can your God become our God and renew our prosperity and awaken in
us dreams of returning greatness? If we have a common Heavenly
Father He must be partial, for He came to His paleface children.
We never saw Him. He gave you laws but had no word for His red
children whose teeming multitudes once filled this vast continent
as stars fill the firmament. No; we are two distinct races with
separate origins and separate destinies. There is little in
common between us.
To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting
place is hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your
ancestors and seemingly without regret. Your religion was written
upon tablets of stone by the iron finger of your God so that you
could not forget. The Red Man could never comprehend or remember
it. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors -- the dreams
of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the
Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in
the hearts of our people.
Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon
as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the
stars. They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never
forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love
its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent
mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and
ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted
living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit,
guide, console, and comfort them.
Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever fled
the approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before
the morning sun. However, your proposition seems fair and I think
that my people will accept it and will retire to the reservation
you offer them. Then we will dwell apart in peace, for the words
of the Great White Chief seem to be the words of nature speaking
to my people out of dense darkness.
It matters little where we pass the remnant of our days. They
will not be many. The Indian's night promises to be dark. Not a
single star of hope hovers above his horizon. Sad-voiced winds
moan in the distance. Grim fate seems to be on the Red Man's
trail, and wherever he will hear the approaching footsteps of his
fell destroyer and prepare stolidly to meet his doom, as does the
wounded doe that hears the approaching footsteps of the hunter.
A few more moon, a few more winters, and not one of the
descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad
land or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will
remain to mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful and
hopeful than yours. But why should I mourn at the untimely fate
of my people? Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation,
like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret
is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will
surely come, for even the White Man whose God walked and talked
with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common
destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see.
We will ponder your proposition and when we decide we will let you
know. But should we accept it, I here and now make this condition
that we will not be denied the privilege without molestation of
visiting at any time the tombs of our ancestors, friends, and
children. Ever part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of
my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove,
has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long
vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the
swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of
stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the
very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their
footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our
ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic
touch. Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy hearted
maidens, and even the little children who lived here and rejoiced
here for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and at
eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits. And when the last
Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have
become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with
the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children
think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the
highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be
alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude.
At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent
and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning
hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land.
The White Man will never be alone.
Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are
not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change
of worlds.