vision2020
Re: Famous chiefs for two please
You're up, Ron. Here's another remanufactured legened for you.
At 03:03 AM 12/7/99 +0000, david sarff wrote:
>Lets try this one:
>Could be its off too. Its the heart that counts in my opinion.
>Its OK Ron wet blankets make great smoke signals.
>
> Chief Seattle, a hereditary leader of the Suquamish Tribe, was born around
>1786, passed
> away on June 7, 1866, and is buried in the tribal cemetery at Suquamish,
>Washington. The
> speech Chief Seattle recited during treaty negotiations in 1854 is
>regarded as one of the
> greatest statements ever made concerning the relationship between a people
>and the earth -
> that speech, published in the Seattle Sunday Star , Seattle, Washington
>Territory, October 29,
> 1887, is reproduced here for you.
>
>
>
> Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion
> upon our fathers for centuries untold,
> and which to us looks eternal, may change.
> Today is fair,
> tomorrow may be overcast with clouds.
>
> My words are like the stars that never set.
> What Seattle says the Great Chief at Washington can rely upon
> with as much certainty as our paleface brothers can rely upon
> the return of the seasons.
>
> The son of the White Chief says
> his father sends us greetings of friendship and good will.
> This is kind,
> for we know he has little need of our friendship in return
> because his people are many.
> They are like the grass that covers the vast prairies,
> while my people are few
> and resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain.
>
> The Great, and I presume, also good,
> White Chief sends us word that he wants to buy our lands
> but is willing to allow us
> to reserve enough to live on comfortably.
> This indeed appears generous,
> for the Red Man no longer has rights that he need respect,
> and the offer may be wise, also
> for we are no longer in need of a great country.
>
> There was a time when our people covered the whole land
> as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea covers its shell-paved floor.
> But that time has long since passed away
> with the greatness of tribes now almost forgotten.
> I will not mourn over our untimely decay,
> nor reproach my paleface brothers for hastening it,
> for we, too,
> may have been somewhat to blame.
>
> When our young men grow angry
> at some real or imaginary wrong,
> and disfigure their faces with black paint,
> their hearts, also, are disfigured and turn black,
> and then their cruelty is relentless and knows no bounds,
> and our old men are not able to restrain them.
>
> But let us hope that hostilities
> between the Red Man and his paleface brothers
> may never return.
> We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain.
>
> True it is, that revenge,
> with our young braves is considered gain,
> even at the cost of their own lives,
> but old men who stay at home in times of war,
> and mothers who have sons to lose,
> know better.
>
> Our great father Washington,
> for I presume he is now our father as well as yours,
> since George has moved his boundaries to the North
> - our great and good father, I say,
> sends us word by his son,
> who, no doubt, is a great chief among his people
> that if we do as he desires he will protect us.
>
> His brave armies will be to us a bristling wall of strength,
> and his great ships of war will fill our harbors
> so that our ancient enemies far to the northward
> - the Simsiams and Hyas,
> will no longer frighten our women and old men.
> Then he will be our father
> and we will be his children.
>
> But can that ever be?
> Your God is not our God!
> Your God loves your people and hates mine!
> He folds His strong arms lovingly around the white man
> and leads him as a father leads his infant son
> - but He has forsaken his red children,
> He makes your people wax strong every day
> and soon they will fill all the land;
> while my people are ebbing away
> like a fast receding tide that will never flow again.
> The white man's God cannot love his red children
> or He would protect them.
> They seem to be orphans who can look nowhere for help.
>
> How, then, can we become brothers?
> How can your Father become our Father
> and bring us prosperity,
> and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness?
>
> Your God seems to us to be partial.
> He came to the white man.
> We never saw Him, never heard His voice.
> He gave the white man laws,
> but had no word for His red children
> whose teeming millions once filled this vast continent
> as the stars fill the firmament.
>
> No. We are two distinct races,
> and must remain ever so,
> there is little in common between us.
>
> The ashes of our ancestors are sacred
> and their final resting place is hallowed ground,
> while you wander away from the tombs of your fathers
> seemingly without regrets.
>
> Your religion was written on tablets of stone
> by the iron finger of an angry God,
> lest you might forget it.
> The Red Man could never remember nor comprehend it.
>
> Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors
> - the dreams of our old men,
> given to them by the Great Spirit,
> and the visions of our Sachems,
> and is written in the hearts of our people.
>
> Your dead cease to love you
> and the homes of their nativity
> as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb.
> They wander far away beyond the stars,
> are soon forgotten and never return.
>
> Our dead never forget the beautiful world
> that gave them being.
> They still love its winding rivers,
> its great mountains and its sequestered vales,
> and they ever yearn in tenderest affection
> over the lonely-hearted living,
> and often return to visit and comfort them.
>
> Day and night cannot dwell together.
> The Red Man has ever fled the approach of the white man,
> as the changing mist on the mountain side
> flees before the blazing morning sun.
>
> However, your proposition seems a just one,
> and I think that my folks will accept it
> and will retire to the reservation you offer them,
> and we will dwell apart and in peace,
> for the words of the Great White Chief
> seem to be the voice of Nature speaking to my people
> out of the thick darkness that is fast gathering around them
> like a dense fog floating inward from a midnight sea.
>
> It matters little where we pass the remainder of our days.
> They are not many.
> The Indian's night promises to be dark.
> No bright star hovers above his horizon.
> Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance.
> Some grim Nemesis of our race
> is on the Red Man's trail,
> and wherever he goes he will still hear
> the sure approaching footsteps of the fell destroyer
> and prepare to meet his doom,
> as does the wounded doe
> that hears the approaching footsteps of the hunter.
>
> A few more moons, a few more winters,
> and not one of all the mighty hosts
> that once filled this broad land
> or that now roam in fragmentary bands
> through these vast solitudes or lived in happy homes,
> protected by the Great Spirit,
> will remain to weep over the graves of a people
> once as powerful and as hopeful as your own!
>
> But why should I repine?
> Why should I murmur at the fate of my people?
> Tribes are made up of individuals
> and are no better than they.
> Men come and go like the waves of a sea.
> A tear, a tamanamus, a dirge
> and they are gone from our longing eyes forever.
> Even the white man, whose God walked and talked
> with him as friend to friend,
> is not exempt from the common destiny.
> We may be brothers after all.
> We shall see.
>
> We will ponder your proposition,
> and when we have decided we will tell you.
> But should we accept it,
> I here and now make this first condition,
> that we will not be denied the privilege,
> without molestation,
> of visiting the graves of our ancestors and friends.
>
> Every part of this country is sacred to my people.
> Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove
> has been hallowed by some fond memory
> or some sad experience of my tribe.
> Even the rocks,
> which seem to lie dumb as they swelter in the sun
> along the silent shore in solemn grandeur
> thrill with memories of past events
> connected with the fate of my people,
> the very dust under your feet
> responds more lovingly to our footsteps than to yours,
> because it is the ashes of our ancestors,
> and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch,
> for the soil is rich with the life of our kindred.
>
> The sable braves,
> and fond mothers,
> and glad-hearted maidens,
> and the little children who lived and rejoiced here
> and whose very names are now forgotten,
> still love these solitudes
> and their deep fastnesses at eventide grow shadowy
> with the presence of dusky spirits.
>
> And when the last Red Man
> shall have perished from the earth
> and his memory among white men
> shall have become a myth,
> these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe
> and when your children's children shall think themselves alone
> in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway,
> or in the silence of the woods,
> they will not be alone.
> In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude.
>
> At night, when the streets of your cities and villages
> shall be 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.
>
>
>
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