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Chief Seattle’s Treaty Oration |
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1854 |
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Chief
Seattle |
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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.
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.
we are two distinct races with separate origins and separate
destinies. There is little in common between us. 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.
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 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 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 moons, 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.
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.
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.
Interpreted and translated by
Dr. Charles A. Smith
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