How Can You Buy or Sell the Earth?

[Anais_nin]

Sealth (Seattle), Chief. 1854. How Can You Buy or Sell the Earth? Chief Sealth's (Seattle's) reply to President Franklin Pierce.

Provided by James R. Martin, Ph.D., CMA
Professor Emeritus, University of South Florida

Environmental Cost Main | Political Issues Main | Social Accounting Main
 

 

In 1854, the United States Government offered to buy two million acres of Indian land in the Northwest. The following is a translation of the Dwamish Chief Sealth's (Seattle's) reply to President Franklin Pierce. Although the Chief's response has been published several times (See note), I copied it from a display on the wall at Mountain Lake Lodge near Blacksburg Virginia.

The Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. The Great Chief also sends us words of friendship and good will. This is kind of him, since we know he has little need of our friendship in return. But we will consider your offer.

How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing, and every humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red man. So, when the Great Chief in Washington sends word that the wishes to buy our land, he asks much of us...

This we know: All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. 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. But we will consider your offer to go to the reservation you have for my people. We will live apart, and in peace.

One thing we know, which the white man may one day discover - our God is the same God. You may think now that you own him as you wish to own the land: but you cannot.

He is the God of man; and his compassion is equal for the red man and the white. This earth is precious to Him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator. The whites too shall pass; perhaps sooner than all other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.

But in your perishing you will shine brightly, fired by the strength of the God who brought you to this land and for some special purpose gave you dominion over this land and over the red man. That destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses are tamed 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 goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival. So we will consider your offer to buy the land.

If we agree, it will be to secure the reservation you have promised. There, perhaps, we may live out our brief days as we wish. When the last red man has vanished from the earth, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, these shores and forests will still hold the spirits of my people. For they love this earth as a newborne loves its mother's heartbeat. So if we sell our land, love it as we've loved it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you take it. And preserve it for your children, and love it...as God loves us all. One thing we know. Our God is the same God. This earth is precious to Him. Even the white man cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all.

We shall see..."

 

[Catalpha]

Brilliant! However, I don't think of this everytime I use a plastic cup and straw when I get a Java Chip Frappachino from Starbucks. 

[Anais_nin]

It was a made up letter  according to some historians

[Anais_nin]

Erik Painter

, Know a bit about Native American history.

Updated April 12

 

 

It is well known that the “Chief Seattle Speech” was largely made up by late Victorian American writers. There is no way that in its current form it is a real speech. Siʔał (Chief Seattle) refused to speak English or Chinook jargon, (the trading lingua franca of the area). He probably understood them some, but he refused to speak them in public for political reasons. He spoke in suq̓ʷabšucid, the Suquamish dialect of the Southern Coast Salish Lushootseed language.

The American man who claimed he “took notes” on the occasion of his speech did not speak Lushootseed. It is unlikely that the speech had much environmental content. It probably was not bittersweet. It most likely had content about honoring treaties. The occasion was upcoming treaty talks. It might have had references to their long use of the land and sea and to the ancestors.

The real speech was in 1854. It was after the Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens spoke at a gathering in the City of Seattle. Dr. Henry J. Smith, a surgeon, published a recollection of the speech in the Seattle Star in 1887. Smith was a young man in 1854, newly arrived in the city. It is unclear how he would have understood any of the speech. He claimed he took notes at the time and later used the notes to reconstruct the speech. Smith noted that he had recorded "but a fragment of his [Seattle's] speech”. His notes no longer exist and may have burned in the Great Seattle Fire.

Real records of times Siʔał spoke to Indian Agents in later years have similar themes but the exact words a certainly not his. There are at least 11 different versions of the text. He spoke for a long time with his hand on the shoulder of the much shorter Stevens. If Smith took notes, then someone then would have needed to translate Seattle’s words into Chinook Jargon (many Americans spoke Chinook at the time, some as their main language). However, it is a limited trading language. Then someone needed to translate it into English. Smith's English version is in a flowery Victorian prose.

Smith's version of the speech also does not square with the recollections of other witnesses. Tribal leaders at Suquamish say that Smith came to them and took notes too. It is unclear if this is true. This is the text of the first published account. It was more than 20 years after Seattle’s death. Chief Seattle's Speech of 1854.

After the first version of the “speech”, many other versions were made. Each one is a little different. The well known one on the 1972 poster was taken from written by William Arrowsmith. He tried to remove the Victorian language. The poster makers added things about buffalo and trains. There were never any buffalo in Western Washington and trains had not arrived in Seattle. The Duwamish and Suquamish lived on salmon and fish oil and other seafood and lived in large wooden homes, not on buffalo living in tepees.

The famous line at the end was added at this time in the Seventies. "The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth." was written by Ted Perry to promote a Baptist movie called Home. “the real problem is that I should not have used the name of an actual human being, Chief Seattle. That I could put words into the mouth of someone I did not know, particularly a Native American, is pure hubris if not racist.”— Ted Perry.

It was a Southern Baptist movie, so Baptist ideas were added at this time too. The producer said, “ I added the references to God and I am a savage to make the [Southern Baptist] Radio and Television Commission happy”.

It seems the main reason Smith published his “Seattle speech” in the late 1800s was due to Seattle politics. New immigrants were starting to overpower the original pioneers who had controlled local politics. The older settlers were denounced as "obstacles in the way of progress," as "old mossbacks". One newspaper claiming the new immigrants wanted "the overthrow of our institutions, ... rob you ... of home, of country and of religion." Smith was talking about the demise of the original pioneers who found themselves out numbered, not Native Americans or Chief Seattle. It was a metaphor.

This same sort of move, of identifying with Native people, was done in the American South by whites. This is one reason why so many families from the South claim to be “part Cherokee”. There was a desire to have ancient roots in the land, when in fact most families in the deep South came after 1830 when the Native people were forced out. These families wanted to conflate the “Lost Cause” with the Native Americans who lost land and were oppressed by an overbearing federal government intent on eliminating long held traditions. For these white families the “deep traditions” were the oppression of non whites. It mattered little that the first use of the “States Rights” trope was to drive the Cherokee out in a Georgia Gold Rush starting in 1829.

The Suquamish tribe today (Siʔał’s father’s people) feel that the speech would have had these ideas in it:

• Warnings to Isaac Stevens regarding expectations during the coming treaty negotiations
• A goal of peace and a desire to live in harmony;
• Reverence for ancestors and the land of their ancestors, who return to visit the living
• Siʔał’s belief that Indian people will be on this land forever.

The Suquamish culture is still alive. They have about 6,500 enrolled members. Their reservation lands are a small area to the west of Seattle across Puget Sound. About 1,475 acres are owned by the Suquamish Tribe, 2,601 acres are owned by individual citizens of the Suquamish Tribe. The Suquamish Tribe is governed by a seven-member council, elected by citizens of the Suquamish Tribe. Government departments include administration, child support enforcement, community development, court, early learning center, education, fisheries, human services, legal, natural resources, police. The tribe participates in the renewal of canoe culture called Tribal Journeys. Tribal Canoe Journeys

They run a wonderful museum. Port Madison Enterprises, which is the Tribe’s economic development arm, is the second-largest private-sector employer in Kitsap County with 752 employees. It owns and runs Suquamish Clearwater Casino Resort, White Horse Golf Club, Kiana Lodge, PME Retail, Property Management, and Port Madison Enterprises Construction Corporation. As of a few years ago they paid $52.2 million in wages and benefits; spent $46.8 million in goods and services purchased; $18.6 million in capital project investment. Home of the Suquamish People

Below is the House of Awakened Culture.

Seattle’s mother’s side was Duwamish. Some relatives moved to live on the Suquamish or other reservations. The Duwamish have organized as a tribe with about 569 enrolled members. However the federal government has refused to recognize them. Cecile Hansen, great-great-grandniece of Chief Sealth is the elected Chairwoman. In 2009, the Duwamish tribe opened the Duwamish Longhouse and Cultural Center on purchased land near their ancient settlement of Ha-AH-Poos. It is in West Seattle. Duwamish Tribe

Siʔał (Chief Seattle) is these people’s direct ancestor from not very long ago. I think we can take what they feel to be true, as being as close to the truth as we may get. History & Culture

The Many Speeches of Chief Seattle (Seathl):: The Manipulation of the Record on Behalf of Religious, Political and Environmental Causes (2015) by Eli Gifford

Answering Chief Seattle by Albert Furtwangler Answering Chief Seattle