Study Guide: Chief Seattle
The Earth is our home. We are a part of the Earth, and we rely upon the Earth for our very existence. The Earth’s gifts feed us, provide shelter, and all the materials we need to survive and thrive.
Even modest changes to Earth’s systems have profound effects on human life and the course of civilizations. Understanding these systems and how they interact with us is vital for our survival.
A better understanding of Earth cycles is especially important at this time. There are new challenges facing humanity—dwindling energy and mineral resources, changing climate, water shortages, species extinction, and more. There are also difficult decisions to make. How well humans survive the twenty-first century will depend upon the success of our willingness to live in balance within Earth’s systems.
Human history is a record of the creativity and ingenuity of people solving difficult problems. Solutions to current Earth-related challenges will also come from human creativity. However, as our lifestyles have become more complex, so have the solutions. It will take a deeper understanding of the Earth for future generations to protect all life from foolish human activity.
This we know; the earth does not belong to humanity; humanity belongs to the earth. This we know; all things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected
Chief Si’ahl (1780-1866), Namesake of the City of Seattle
The name “Seattle” is an Anglicization (English version) of Si’ahl, the most famous Duwamish chief. Si’ahl’s mother Sholeetsa was Duwamish and his father Shweabe was chief of the the Suquamish Tribe. It is said that Si’ahl was born at his mother’s Duwamish village of Stukw on the Black River, in what is now the city of Kent.
As a boy, Si’ahl saw British Captain George Vancouver’s ships passing through the Khwulch (Puget Sound) in 1792. Vancouver anchored the ships HMS Discovery and HMS Chatham at the Suquamish summer village at Restoration Point, near the southeast corner of Bainbridge Island. Si’ahl and his father Shweabe observed the British visitors at Puget Sound.
In the late 1700s and early 1800s, Si’ahl witnessed epidemics of new diseases introduced by British and American traders, decimating Puget Sound’s Native population. Scientists estimate that 12,000 Puget Sound Salish—over 30% of the Native population—died from smallpox, measles, influenza and other diseases introduced by Europeans during the first 80 years of contact.
Si’ahl’s Leadership
It is said that Si’ahl grew up speaking both the Duwamish and Suquamish dialects of Lushootseed. Because Native descent was derived from both parent’s lineage, Si’ahl inherited his position as chief of the Duwamish Tribe from his maternal uncle. He built a strong alliance between the two nations of his parents.
As a young warrior, Si’ahl was known for his courage, daring, and leadership in battle. In the 1820s, thirty years before European-American immigrants landed on the shores of Elliott Bay, local tribes waited uneasily for a threatened invasion. Rumors had reached Si’ahl that a large force of warriors from the White River tribes was on its way downriver to make a night attack on the Duwamish.
Si’ahl set up a night ambush at a strategic bend in the Black River, defeating over 100 warriors in 5 large war canoes. When word of the victory reached Old Man House, the important Suquamish longhouse on Agate Pass, a council of six tribes chose Si’ahl as the leader of a 6-tribe confederation in central Puget Sound. As leader of six local tribes of central Puget Sound, Chief Si’ahl continued the friendly relations with European-American immigrants that his father began in 1792.
Protector and Benefactor
By 1851, Chief Si’ahl was a venerable leader respected for his peaceful ways, not his prowess at war. Chief Si’ahl and other members of the Duwamish Nation greeted the first European-American immigrants when they arrived at Alki Point, near Duwamish Head in what is now West Seattle.
From the early years of European-American settlement, Chief Si’ahl and the Duwamish worked hard to be protectors and benefactors of the immigrants. European-American immigrants perceived that Chief Si’ahl was an intelligent man striving to live amicably and peacefully with the newcomers.
Gifts from the Earth
Under Chief Si’ahl’s leadership, the Duwamish provided guides, transportation by canoe, and other tangible assistance, including labor for Henry Yesler’s first sawmill, and potatoes from the Duwamish cultivated fields near Renton, enabling the new immigrants to survive and to thrive. The Duwamish Tribe burned sections of forest to promote clearings for their crops, and felled trees for canoes and lumber for their longhouses, sharing their skills and knowledge with the immigrants.
Chief Si’ahl and his tribes were helpful in times of distress. With no cows available, the new European-American immigrants lacked milk for their children. The Duwamish showed them how to substitute clam juice. The Duwamish also helped shelter the newcomers, teaching them how long boards could be split from straight-grained cedar. The Duwamish also traded salmon, venison, furs, and potatoes from Duwamish gardens, to the new arrivals.
Chief Si’ahl, The Orator
Seattle was well-respected among his own people and the colonial-settlers as a powerful and eloquent orator. Smith wrote his memory of the speech in the ornate English of Victorian oratory. Chief Seattle would have given the speech in the Lushootseed language, which would then have been translated into Chinook Indian trade language, and finally into English.
In 1854, after hunting down and trapping the Si’ahl people, the government of United States made an offer for a large area of Indian land and promised a ‘reservation’ for the Indian people. Chief Seattle’s reply is a beautiful and profound statement of respect for the Earth. The speech was recorded in notes by the pioneer Dr. Henry Smith, on the occasion of an 1854 visit to Seattle of Isaac Stevens (1818-1862). Stevens was governor and Commissioner of Indian Affairs of Washington Territory.
The speech has been altered and embellished over time, but the ideas themselves remain a powerful, bittersweet plea for respect of the Earth. The version below duplicates Dr. Smith’s text as published by the Seattle Sunday Star on October 29, 1887, and as reprinted in Grant’s 1891 History of Seattle, Washington. Furtwangler has merged the two texts since the sole copy of the extant newspaper version is damaged. (It now resides in Special Collections at the University of Washington Library.) The speech, along with Henry Smith’s account of it, is reproduced here with all original punctuation and spelling.
Henry Smith’s Account of Chief Si’ahl’s Speech
When Governor Stevens first arrived in Seattle and told the natives he had been appointed commissioner of Indian affairs for Washington Territory, they gave him a demonstrative reception in front of Dr. Maynard’s office, near the waterfront on Main street. The Bay swarmed with canoes and the shore was lined with a living mass of swaying, writhing, dusky humanity, until old Chief Seattle’s trumpet-toned voice rolled over the immense multitude like the startling reveille of a bass drum, when silence became as instantaneous and perfect as that which follows a clap of thunder from a clear sky.
The governor was then introduced to the native multitude by Dr. Maynard, and at once commenced in a conversational, plain and straightforward style, an explanation of his mission among them, which is too well understood to require recapitulation.
When he sat down, Chief Seattle arose with all the dignity of a senator who carries the responsibilities of a great nation on his shoulders. Placing one hand on the governor’s head, and slowly pointing heavenward with the index finger of the other, he commenced his memorable address in solemn and impressive tones.
Note: The Original Peoples had been led to believe that George Washington was still alive and that King George was the ruler of England.
The ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their final resting place is hallowed ground, while you wander away from the tombs of your fathers seemingly without regret.
Chief Si’ahl’s Speech
Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion on our fathers for centuries untold, and which, to us, looks eternal, may change. Today it is fair, tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like the stars that never set. What Seattle says, the great chief, Washington … can rely upon, with as much certainty as our pale-face brothers can rely upon the return of the seasons.
The son [a reference to Terr. Gov. Stevens] of the White Chief says his father sends us greetings of friendship and good will. This is kind, for we know he has little need of our friendship in return, because his people are many. They are like the grass that covers the vast prairies, while my people are few, and resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain.
The great, and I presume also good, white chief sends us word that he wants to buy our lands but is willing to allow us to reserve enough to live on comfortably. This indeed appears generous, for the red man no longer has rights that he need respect, and the offer may be wise, also, for we are no longer in need of a great country.
There was a time when our people covered the whole land, as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor. But that time has long since passed away with the greatness of tribes now almost forgotten. I will not mourn over our untimely decay, nor reproach my pale-face brothers for hastening it, for we, too, may have been somewhat to blame.
When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, their hearts, also, are disfigured and turn black, and then their cruelty is relentless and knows no bounds, and our old men are not able to restrain them.
But let us hope that hostilities between the red-man and his pale-face brothers may never return. We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain.
True it is, that revenge, with our young braves, is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and old women, who have sons to lose, know better.
Our great father Washington, for I presume he is now our father, as well as yours, since George [a reference to King George III, i.e., Great Britain] has moved his boundaries to the north; our great and good father, I say, sends us word by his son, who, no doubt, is a great chief among his people, that if we do as he desires, he will protect us. His brave armies will be to us a bristling wall of strength, and his great ships of war will fill our harbors so that our ancient enemies far to the northward, the Simsiams (Tsimshian) and Hydas (Haidas), will no longer frighten our women and old men. Then he will be our father and we will be his children.
But can this ever be? Your God loves your people and hates mine; he folds his strong arms lovingly around the white man and leads him as a father leads his infant son, but he has forsaken his red children; he makes your people wax strong every day, and soon they will fill the land; while my people are ebbing away like a fast-receding tide, that will never flow again. The white man’s God cannot love his red children or he would protect them. They seem to be orphans who can look nowhere for help. How then can we become brothers? How can your father become our father and bring us prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness?
Your God seems to us to be partial. He came to the white man. We never saw Him; never even heard His voice; He gave the white man laws but He had no word for His red children whose teeming millions filled this vast continent as the stars fill the firmament. No, we are two distinct races and must remain ever so. There is little in common between us. The ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their final resting place is hallowed ground, while you wander away from the tombs of your fathers seemingly without regret.
Your religion was written on tables of stone by the iron finger of an angry God, lest you might forget it. The red man could never remember nor comprehend it.
Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors, the dreams of our old men, given them 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 homes of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb. They wander far off beyond the stars, are soon forgotten, and never return. Our dead never forget the beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its winding rivers, its great mountains and its sequestered vales, and they ever yearn in tenderest affection over the lonely hearted living and often return to visit and comfort them.
Day and night cannot dwell together. The red man has ever fled the approach of the white man, as the changing mists on the mountain side flee before the blazing morning sun.
However, your proposition seems a just one, and I think my folks will accept it and will retire to the reservation you offer them, and we will dwell apart and in peace, for the words of the great white chief seem to be the voice of nature speaking to my people out of the thick darkness that is fast gathering around them like a dense fog floating inward from a midnight sea.
It matters but little where we pass the remainder of our days.
The Indian’s night promises to be dark. No bright star hovers above the horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance. Some grim Nemesis of our race is on the red man’s trail, and wherever he goes he will still hear the sure approaching footsteps of the fell destroyer and prepare 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 all the mighty hosts that once filled this broad land or that now roam in fragmentary bands through these vast solitudes will remain to weep over the tombs of a people once as powerful and as hopeful as your own.
But why should we repine? Why should I murmur at the fate of my people? Tribes are made up of individuals and are no better than they. Men come and go like the waves of a sea. A tear, a tamanawus, a dirge, and they are gone from our longing eyes forever. Even the white man, whose God walked and talked with him, as friend to friend, is not exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We shall see.
We will ponder your proposition, and when we have decided we will tell you. But should we accept it, I here and now make this the first condition: That we will not be denied the privilege, without molestation, of visiting at will the graves of our ancestors and friends. Every part of this country is sacred to my people. Every hill-side, every valley, every plain and grove has been hallowed by some fond memory or some sad experience of my tribe.
Even the rocks that seem to lie dumb as they swelter in the sun along the silent seashore in solemn grandeur thrill with memories of past events connected with the fate of my people, and the very dust under your feet responds more lovingly to our footsteps than to yours, because it is the ashes of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch, for the soil is rich with the life of our kindred.
The sable braves, and fond mothers, and glad-hearted maidens, and the little children who lived and rejoiced here, and whose very names are now forgotten, still love these solitudes, and their deep fastnesses at eventide grow shadowy with the presence of dusky spirits. And when the last red man shall have perished from the earth and his memory among white men shall have become a myth, these shores shall swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children’s children shall think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway or in the silence of the 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 shall be silent, and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled 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.
Governor Stevens’ Reply
Smith’s account continues: “Other speakers followed, but I took no notes. Governor Stevens’ reply was brief. He merely promised to meet them in general council on some future occasion to discuss the proposed treaty. Chief Seattle’s promise to adhere to the treaty should one be ratified, was observed to the letter, for he was ever the unswerving and faithful friend of the white man. The above is but a fragment of his speech, and lacks all the charm lent by the grace and earnestness of the sable old orator, and the occasion.