Chief Seatle's Speech Continued
Every 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 sa or happy event in days long vanished. even the rocks, which seem dumb and dead as they swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with 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 to yours, because it is rich with the blood of our anscestors and our bare feet are consiousnof the sympathetic touch. Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad happhearted maidens, and even our little children who lived here and rejoiced 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 chldren'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 strrets of your cities and villages are silent, and you think them desererted, 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 judst and deal kindly with the my people. For the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say/ There is no death. Only a change of worlds.
This speech was given by Chief Sealth (Seattle) in 1854 and is his authentic speech. In a870, for the making of a movie, he was quoted as below, and these are not his true words.
Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it; whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
What is man without the beasts? If there were no beasts, man would die from a great lonliness of the heart.
THe earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls man.
Chief Joseph was a highly respected Nez Perce Indian by Indians and non-Indians alike. When gold was discovered on the land his tribe was treartued for and the US Government tried to give them a smaller parcel of land, he took his tribe on a journy to Canada where the tribe would be free. He surrendered 40 miles from the Canadian border becase his people were starving and the army had surrounded him once again. His most famous quote is "From where the sun stands now, I will fight no more forever."
It does not require many words to speak the truth.
Our Fathers gave us many laws, which they learned from their fathers. These laws were good. |
