“My words are like the stars that never change …”
Chief Seattle was born in 1786 and died in 1866 at 80 years of age, one year after the city that bears his name passed a law which made it illegal for Indians to live there. He was a great orator and a skillful diplomat.
Note: The President of the United States, Franklin Pierce, in 1854 sent a proposal to the Chief Seattle, of the tribe Suwamish, to buy the Northwest Territories of the United States now forming the state of Washington. In return, he promises to create a “reservation” for indigenous people. The Chief Seattle responds in 1855.
Chief Seattle’s Letter to the President of the United States:
“Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries untold, and although it may seem immutable and eternal, may change. Now is clear. 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 on it as much as he can rely on 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 very kind of him for we know he has little need of our friendship. His people are many. They are like the grass that covers vast prairies. My people are few. They resemble the few trees that are scattered in a meadow hit by a storm.
The great, and I presume – good, White Chief says he wishes to buy our land but at the same time, he leaves us enough to live comfortably. Indeed this seems to be just, and even generous, for the Red Man no longer has rights that he need respect, and the offer also seems to be wise as no longer we need a large territory.
There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of the sea, but that time is long gone along with the greatness of tribes that are now just a painful memory. I will not cry about it, of our disappearance time, nor will I reproach my paleface brothers with having accelerated it, because we are also somewhat responsible for it.
Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, denotes that their hearts are black, and they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and women are unable to restrain them. It always has been. That was when the white man began to push our forefathers westward. But hopefully never return hostilities between us. We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Young people see as gain revenge, even at the cost of their own lives, but old [who remain] at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know that it is not.
Our good father in Washington-and I presume it 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 north-the Haida and Tsimshians-cease to frighten our women, children, and old. Indeed 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 around the white face 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 has abandoned us. Your God makes your people become stronger every day. Soon they will fill all the land.
Our village is shrinking as a rapidly receding tide that will never return. The white man’s God can not love our people or He would protect them. They seem orphans who have no where to seek 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 biased, because He came to His white children face.
We never saw. He gave them 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 different breeds with different 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 revered spot. You are far from the graves of their 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 in the solemn hours of 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 and native land transferred as soon as the portals of the tomb and wander beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return.
Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them life. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, lakes and secluded glens and green fringed bays, and ever yearn with tender loving affection for lonely hearts living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them.
Day and night can not live together. The Red Man has always shunned approaches of White Man, as the morning mist flees before the sun appears in the morning. However, your proposition seems fair and I think that my people will accept it and will retire to the reservation you offer them. So live apart in peace, as 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 rest of our days. There will be many. The Indian’s night promises to be dark. Not a single star hovers on the horizon. Sad-voiced winds wail in the distance. A sad fate seems to be in the way of the Red Man, and wherever you hear the approaching footsteps of his cruel destroyer and prepare stolidly to meet his fate, as does the wounded doe that hears the next steps of the hunter.
A few more moons, a few more winters, and none of the descendants of the powerful spirits that once moved across this broad land or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people who was once more powerful and more hopeful than yours.
But why should I mourn over the untimely fate of my people? Tribes continue to tribes and nations follow nations 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, can not be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We’ll see.
We will study your proposition and when we have decided, we will tell you. But, if we accept it, I here and now make this condition that we are not denied the privilege, without disturbing, to visit at any time the tombs of our ancestors, friends, and children. Every part of this soil is sacred in the consideration of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every meadow and orchard, has been consecrated by some sad or happy event in days long ago disappeared.
Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as they are roasted in the sun along the silent shore, are filled with memories of exciting events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you are responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it has been enriched by the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Our departed braves, beloved mother, cheerful and happy maidens, and even children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and during the late afternoon, they will receive the dark spirits returning.
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 be filled with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children’s children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, on the road, 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 they are deserted, they will throng with the returning guests and that once filled them and still loves 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. ”
Originally published in the Seattle Sunday Star, October 29, 1887.
The text was written by a Dr. Smith, who took notes as the Chief Seattle spoke in the Suquamish dialect of Central Puget Sound Salish (Lushootseed), and created the English text of these notes. Smith insisted that his version “did not contain the grace and elegance of the original.” In the time of this speech was common belief among whites as among many Native Americans, that Native Americans are extinct.
“My words are like the stars that never change …”
“My words are like stars that never change …”
The Chief Seattle was born in 1786 and died in 1866 at the age of 80, a year after the city
Chief Seattle was born in 1786 and died in 1866 at 80 years of age, one year after the city that bears his name passed a law which made it illegal for Indians were living in it. It was a great orator and a skillful diplomat.
Note: The President of the United States, Franklin Pierce, in 1854 sent a proposal to the Chief Seattle, of the tribe Suwamish, to buy the Northwest Territories of the United States now forming the state of Washington. In return, he promises to create a “reservation” for indigenous people. The Chief Seattle responds in 1855.