Extract 1.
Yonder sky that has wept tears for compassion upon my people for centuries untold, and which to us appears changeless and internal, main change. Today is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like stars that never change.
(e) what do you find out about his character from the text from which the passage is taken ?
Speech by Chief Seattle 1854
Answers
Answer:
Over the years, Chief Seattle’s famous speech has been embellished, popularized, and carved into many a monument, but its origins have remained inadequately explained. Understood as a symbolic encounter between indigenous America, represented by Chief Seattle, and industrialized or imperialist America, represented by Isaac L Stevens, the first governor of Washington Territory, it was first published in a Seattle newspaper in 1887 by a pioneer who claimed he had heard Seattle (or Sealth) deliver it in the 1850s. No other record of the speech has been found, and Isaac Stevens’s writings do not mention it. Yet it has long been taken seriously as evidence of a voice crying out of the wilderness of the American past.
About the Author
Seattle was a great speaker and skilled diplomat. Born in 1786, his real name, in the Lushootseed language, was See-ahth, which the whites found nearly impossible to pronounce.
Seattle’s mother Sholeetsa was Dkhw’Duw’Absh (Duwamish) and his father Shweabe was chief of the Dkhw’Suqw’Absh (the Suquamish tribe). Seattle was bom around 1780 on or near Blake Island, Washington. Seattle grew up speaking both the Duwamish and Suquamish dialects.
Seattle earned his reputation at a young age as a leader and a warrior, ambushing and defeating groups of tribal enemy raiders. Like many of his contemporaries, he owned slaves captured during his raids. He was tall and broad for a Puget Sound native, standing nearly six feet tall; Hudson’s Bay Company traders gave him the nickname Le Gros (The Big Guy). He was also known as an orator, and when he addressed an audience, his voice is said to have carried from his camp to the Stevens Hotel at First and Marion, a distance of 3/4 mile (1.2 km)