Smith published the transcription of a speech given by Chief Seattle thirty years earlier, which he claimed to have attended and of which he had taken notes. The occasion of the speech was the visit of the new Governor, Isaac Stevens, to a council of local tribal chiefs: a circumstance confirmed by the historical record. Chief Seattle was the most influential Indian authority in the area, so he was probably present.
However, the date, the place and the actual words of Chief Seattle’s speech are controversial and disputed. Smith states that the purpose of Governor Stevens’s meeting was to discuss the surrender or sale of the Indians’ land to white settlers, but there is no evidence to support this claim. Moreover, according to contemporary witnesses, Smith was not present at the 1854 meeting.
A spokesperson for the Suquamish Nation has, however, stated that, according to their traditions, Smith consulted the tribal elders many times before publishing his transcription of the speech in 1887. The elders saw the notes Smith had taken while listening to the speech and approved them. Smith’s notes, however, no longer exist.
Later versions of the speech were published in 1891, 1929 and 1931.
Then, in the late 1960s, the speech enjoyed a new and great success, thanks to the rise of the ‘counterculture’ and to the articles of William Arrowsmith, a professor at the University of Texas, who had come across the speech while reading a collection of essays.
Arrowsmith attempted to ‘clean up’ Smith’s version of its Victorian linguistic influences, trying to reconstruct Chief Seattle’s original language.
But the enormous fame of Chief Seattle’s speech is probably due to a poster printed in 1972, which shows an image of the Indian chief superimposed on the words of his ‘letter’ to the ‘president in Washington’. The words are taken from Arrowsmith’s version of the speech, but what proved decisive was the pairing with the image of the buffalo and the sentence ‘The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth’.
The poster was produced to promote a film entitled Home, an environmentalist film made for the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission. The film’s screenwriter explained that he had first heard a version of the text read by William Arrowsmith at the first Earth Day celebration in 1970.
A ‘twin’ text of Chief Seattle’s speech began to circulate in the 1970s as a ‘1855 letter sent by Chief Seattle to President Franklin Pierce’. It is a slightly modified form of the Perry/Stevens version. It was published in the 11 November 1972 issue of the magazine Environmental Action.
However, there is no trace of a letter from Chief Seattle either in President Pierce’s private papers at the New Hampshire Historical Society or in Pierce’s presidential papers at the Library of Congress.
Speech of Chief Seattle
(in William Arrowsmith’s version)
BROTHERS: this sky above us, which has wept compassion on our fathers for many hundreds of years, seems unchanging to us, but it may change. Today it is fair. Tomorrow it may be covered with clouds.
My words are like the stars. They do not set. What Seattle says, the great chief Washington can rely on as surely as our white brothers can rely on the return of the seasons.
The son of the White Chief says that his father sends us words of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him, since we know he has little need of our friendship in return. His people are many, like the grass that covers the plains. My people are few, like the trees scattered by storms across the meadows.
The great – and good, I believe – White Chief sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But he will reserve enough of it for us to live comfortably. This seems generous, since the red man no longer has rights and needs respect. It may also be a wise thing, since we no longer need a great country.
Once my people covered this land like a tide moving in the wind across plains strewn with shells. But that time has passed, and with it the greatness of the tribes, now almost forgotten.
[…]
Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every hillside, every valley, every clearing and wood is holy in the memory and experience of my people. Even those silent stones along the shore resound with events and memories in the life of my people. The earth beneath your feet responds more lovingly to our steps than to yours, because it is the ash of our grandfathers. Our bare feet recognise the touch of their kin.
The earth is rich with the lives of our kinsfolk.
The young men, the mothers and the girls, the children who once lived here and were happy, still love these solitary places. And in the evening the forests are dark with the presence of the dead. When the last red man has vanished from this earth, and his memory is only a tale among the whites, these shores will still swarm with the invisible dead of my people.
And when the children of your children think they are alone in the fields, in the forests, in the shops, on the roads or in the stillness of the woods, they will not be alone. There is no place in this country where a man can be alone. At night, when the streets of your towns and cities are quiet and you think them empty, they will throng with the returning spirits that once filled them, and that still love these places. The white man will never be alone.
So be just and deal kindly with my people. The dead still have power.
