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.
Chief Seattle - Suqwamish & Duwamish
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We know that the white man
does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same
to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes on the night
and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his
brother, but his enemy - and when he has conquered it, he moves
on. He leaves his fathers' graves, and his children's birthright
is forgotten.
Chief Seattle - Suqwamish & Duwamish
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The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the
red man. But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does
not understand.
There is no quiet place in the white man's cities, no place to
hear the leaves of spring or the rustle of insects' wings. Perhaps
it is because I am a savage and do not understand, but the clatter
only seems to insult the ears.
The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the
face of the pond, the smell of the wind itself cleansed by a midday
rain, or scented with pinon pine. The air is precious to the red
man, for all things share the same breath - the animals, the trees,
the man.
Like a man who has been dying for many days, a man in your city
is numb to the stench.
Chief Seattle - Suqwamish & Duwamish
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A few more hours, a few more winters,
and none of the children of the great tribes that once lived on
this earth, or that roamed in small bands in the woods, will be
left to mourn the graves of a people once as powerful and hopeful
as yours.
The whites, too, shall pass - perhaps sooner than other tribes.
Continue to contaminate your own bed, and you will suffocate in
your own waste.
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.
Chief Seattle - Suqwamish & Duwamish
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The red man has ever fled the approach of
the white man, as the morning mist flees before the morning sun
... It matters little where we pass the remnants of our days. They
will not be many.
But why should I mourn the untimely fate of my people? 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 with friend,
cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers, after
all. We will see ...
Chief Seattle - Suqwamish & Duwamish
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Every part of all this soil is
sacred to my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and
grove has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in the days long
vanished. The very dust you now stand on responds more willingly
to their footsteps than to yours, because it is rich with the blood
of our ancestors and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic
touch.
Even the little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a
brief season 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 our 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.
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 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.
Chief Seattle - Suqwamish & Duwamish
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Native American Legends A-B