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Dr. Henry Smith translation version: for more info
see:
http://www.chiefseattle.com/history/chiefseattle/speech/speech.htm
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 men 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 altogether powerless. |
