... in a letter to U.S. President Franklin Pierce in 1854. In January of 1855, Chief Seattle ceded his lands in Washington State to the United States government by the Treaty of Point Elliott; as quoted in Michelle Lovric, ed., The World's Greatest Letters: From Ancient Greece to the Twentieth Century, (2002), pp.146-147.
" ... this land is sacred to us.
This shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors.
If we sell you land, you must remember that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is 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 water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.
The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. The rivers carry canoes, and feed our children. If we sell you our land, you must remember, and teach your children, that the rivers are our brothers, and yours, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother.
We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs.
The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on.....
His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert.
I do not know. Our ways are different from your ways...
This we know: the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know." |
