This Sacred Soil by Chief Seattle
Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries untold and which to us appears changeless and eternal, may change. Today is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like the stars that never change. Whatever Seattle says the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun or the seasons. The White Chief says that Big Chief at Washington sends us greetings of friendship and goodwill. That is kind of him for we know he has little need of our friendship in return. His people are many. They are like the grass that covers vast praries. My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain. . . . I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach our paleface brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame. . . .
Your God is not our God. Your God loves your people and hates mine. He folds his strong and protecting arms lovingly around the paleface and leads him by the hand as a father leads his infant son - but He has forsaken His red children - if they really are His. Our God, the Great Spirit, seems also to have forsaken us. Your God makes your people strong everyday. Soon they will fill the land. Our people are ebbing away like a rapidly receding tide that will never return. The white man's God cannot love our people or He would protect them. They seem to be orphans who can look nowhere for help. How then can we be brothers? . . . We are two distinct races with separate origins and separate destinies. There is little in common between us.
To us the ashes of our ancestors is sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors and seemingly without regret. Your religion was written upon tables of stone by the iron finger of your God so you could not forget. The Red Man could never comprehend nor remember it. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors - the dreams of our old men, given to them in solemn hours of night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems; and it is written within the hearts of our people.
Your dead cease to love you and the lands of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander way beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget the beautiful world that gave them being.
Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has never fled the approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before the morning sun. However your proposition seems fair and I think my people will accept it and will retire to the reservation you offer them. Then we will dwell apart in peace. . . . It matters little where we pass the remnant of our days. They will not be many. A few more moons; a few more winters - and not one of the descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in many happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful and hopeful than yours. But why should I mourn over the untimely fate of my people? Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. 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. . . .
Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or hapy event in days long vanished. The very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly 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 will 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 amoung the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think they are 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 loved 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.
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