![]() But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring or the rustle of insect’s wings. There is no quiet place in the white man’s cities. ![]() But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does not understand. ![]() The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert. He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His fathers' graves and his children’s birthright are forgotten. He leaves his fathers' graves behind, and he does not care. The earth is not his brother but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. We know that the white man does not understand our ways. The graves are holy ground, and so these hills, these trees, this portion of the earth is consecrated to us. The red man has always retreated before the advancing white man, as the mist of the mountain runs before the morning sun. If we sell you our land, you must remember, and teach your children, that the rivers are our brothers, and yours, and you must henceforth give rivers the kindness you would give any brother. The rivers carry our canoes, and feed our children. The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father. If we sell you land, you must remember that it is sacred, and that each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. This shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors. So we will consider your offer to buy our land. Our children do not play together and our old men tell different stories. But my people are an ebbing tide, we will never return. Soon you will flood the land like the rivers which crash down the canyons after a sudden rain. He sends machines to help the white man with his work, and builds great villages for him. He will be our father and we will be his children.īut can that ever be? God loves your people, but has abandoned his red children. The Great Chief sends word he will reserve us a place so that So, when the Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land, he asks much of us. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man―all belong to the same family. The perfumed flowers are our sisters the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. Our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man. The white man’s dead forget the country of their birth when they go to walk among the stars. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red man. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing, and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. They do not set.Įvery part of this earth is sacred to my people. What Chief Seattle says, the Great Chief in Washington can count on as truly as our white brothers can count on the return of the seasons. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them from us How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. For we know that if we do not sell, the white man may come with guns and take our land. This is kind of him, since we know he has little need of our friendship in return. The Great Chief also sends us words of friendship and goodwill. ![]() The Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. Brian Swann and Arnold Krupat (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 525-30. by the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission, 1972), reprinted in Rudolf Kaiser, “Chief Seattle’s Speech(es): American Origins and European Reception,” in Recovering the Word: Essays on Native American Literature, ed.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |