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.
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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)
Seattle was also a warrior with a considerable reputation for daring raids on other Indian tribes. After smallpox wiped out many of his people, he realized the inevitablity of the coming tide of white settlement. In 1854, he made his speech on the differences between the Indian way of life and white way of life to more than a thousand of his people gathered to greet the Government’s Indian superintendent, Isaac Stevens. A year later, the chief signed a treaty with the United States Government, ceding much of the area on which the city of Seattle now stands. Most historians agree that the speech was delivered in the Salish dialect. Dr Henry A. Smith is believed to have taken notes and translated it into English. Thus it is Dr Smith’s version published in 1887 which is referred to mostly.
He died in 1866, at the age of 80, one year after the city named for him passed a law making it illegal for Indians to live in Seattle.
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Seattle was also a warrior with a considerable reputation for daring raids on other Indian tribes. After smallpox wiped out many of his people, he realized the inevitablity of the coming tide of white settlement. In 1854, he made his speech on the differences between the Indian way of life and white way of life to more than a thousand of his people gathered to greet the Government’s Indian superintendent, Isaac Stevens. A year later, the chief signed a treaty with the United States Government, ceding much of the area on which the city of Seattle now stands. Most historians agree that the speech was delivered in the Salish dialect. Dr Henry A. Smith is believed to have taken notes and translated it into English. Thus it is Dr Smith’s version published in 1887 which is referred to mostly.