Chief Seattle

If we sell you land, you must remember that it is sacred,and you must teach your children that it sacred and that each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people.

The waters murmur is the voice of my father’s father.

We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs.

His fathers’ grave, and his children’s birthright, is forgotten. He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads.

His appetite will devour the earth and leave only behind a desert.

I do not know. Our ways are different than your ways.

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.

But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand.

The clatter only seems to insults the ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whip-poor-will or the arguments of the frogs around a pond, and the smell of the wind itself, cleaned by a midday rain, or scented with the pinion pine.

But if we sell you our land, you must remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grand father his first breath also receives his last sigh.

And if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where even the white man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadows flowers.

I am a savage and do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive.

What is a man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit.

For what ever happens to the beast, soon happens to man. All things are connected.

You must teach your children the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children the earth is rich with the lives of our kin.

Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother.
Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground,they spit upon themselves.

We shall see.

One thing we know, which the white man may one day discover – our God is the same God.

You may think that you own him, as you wish to own our 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 reap contempt on its Creator.

The whites too shall pass; perhaps sooner than all other tribes. 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 the red man.

That destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills are blotted by talking wires.