TEXT OF CHIEF SEATTLE'S TREATY ORATION 1854

(Seattle Sunday Star Oct. 29,l887 by Dr.H.A. Smith)

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. Then 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.

When the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses all tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires, where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone.

And what is it to say farewell to the swift and the hunt, to the end of living and the beginning of survival? We might understand if we knew what it was that the white man dreams, what he describes to his children on the long winter nights, what visions he burns into their minds, so they will wish for tomorrow. But we are savages. The white man's dreams are hidden from us.

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth.

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.

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. 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 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

powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds.

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