101Kidz : Wildlife : Environment Thoughts
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Reply Of The Native American Chief, Seattle, To The Proposal By The U.S. President In 1854 To Buy Tribal Land
How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of land? The idea is strange to us.

If you do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of this earth is sacred to my people.

Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red men.

The white man's dead forgets the country of their birth when they go to walk among the stars. Our dead never forgets this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man.

We are part of the earth and it is part of us.

The perfumed flowers are sisters, the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our great brothers.

The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man - all belong to the same family.

So, when the Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land, he asks much of us.

But this will not be easy. For this land is sacred to us.

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 us of events and memories in the life of my people.

The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.

We know that the white man doesn't understand our ways. One portion of the land is 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 conquered it, he moves on.

His father's grave, and his children's birth-right, are forgotten. He treats his mother the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads.

His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert.

I do not know. Our ways are different from your way.

The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does not understand.

There is no quiet place in white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect's wings.

And if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where even the white man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow's flowers.

So we will consider your offer to buy our land. If we decide to accept, I will make one condition: the white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers.

I am a savage and do not understand any other way.

I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes in the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train.

I am a savage and I do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive.

What is man without beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from the great loneliness of spirit.

For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happen to man. All things are connected.

Teach your children what we have taught our children, the earth is our mother.

What befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If man spit on the ground, they spit upon themselves.

This we know, the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know.

All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected.

Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web does to himself.

Even the white man, whose God walks and talks with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny.

We may be brothers after all. We shall see.

One thing we know, which the white man may one day discover - our God is the same God.

You may think now that you own Him as you wish to own our land, but you cannot; He is the God of man, and His compassion is equal for the red and the white.

The earth is precious to Him, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator.

The whites too shall pass; perhaps sooner than all other tribes. Contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.

The destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses are tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires.

Where is the thicket? Gone.

Where is the eagle? Gone.

The end of living and the beginning of survival.

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