Chief Seattle's Speech: Context(History)

Chief Seattle's Speech: Context(History)

Chief Seattle (c. 1786 – June 7, 1866) was a Suquamish and Duwamish chief. A leading figure among his people, he pursued a path of accommodation to white settlers. The city of Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington, was named after him. A widely publicized speech arguing in favor of ecological responsibility and respect of Native Americans' land rights had been attributed to him.

The only known photograph of Chief Seattle, taken in 1864

The name Seattle is an Anglicization of the modern Duwamish conventional spelling Si'ahl.He is also known as Sealth, Seattle, Seathl, or See-ahth.

The speech attributed to Chief Seattle has been widely cited as a "powerful, bittersweet plea for respect of Native American rights and environmental values". But this document, which has achieved widespread fame thanks to its promotion in the environmental movement, is of doubtful authenticity. Although Chief Seattle evidently gave a speech expressing such feelings in 1854 to Isaac Stevens, the Governor of Washington Territories at the time, it was not documented until nearly a quarter century later by Dr. Henry Smith. Smith who stated in the October 29, 1887 edition of the Seattle Sunday Star that his documentation of the speech was based on notes he took at the time. The speech was delivered in Seattle's native Lushotseed language, and then into English.

There is controversy about this speech by Sealth concerning the concession of native lands to the settlers.

Even the date and location of the speech has been disputed, but the most common version is that on March 11, 1854, Seattle gave a speech at a large outdoor gathering in Seattle. The meeting had been called by Governor Isaac Ingalls Stevens to discuss the surrender or sale of native land to white settlers. Doc Maynard introduced Stevens, who then briefly explained his mission, which was already well understood by all present.

Seattle then rose to speak. He rested his hand upon the head of the much smaller Stevens, and declaimed with great dignity for an extended period. No one alive today knows what he said; he spoke in the Lushootseed language, and someone translated his words into Chinook Indian trade language, and a third person translated that into English.

Some years later, Dr. Henry A. Smith wrote down an English version of the speech, based on Smith's notes. It was a flowery text in which Sealth purportedly thanked the white people for their generosity, demanded that any treaty guarantee access to Native burial grounds, and made a contrast between the God of the white people and that of his own. Smith noted that he had recorded "...but a fragment of his [Sealth's] speech".