Chief Seattle (1786?-1866)
Chief of the Suquamish
by Robert Ellsberg

+This month we have chosen Chief Seattle as our Gift Person. Few have spoken with such clarity and weight of wisdom about the interconnectedness of all life. As citizens of a world that has become alienated from its roots, we owe a great debt of gratitude to native people everywhere who help us to rekindle our love for Mother Earth. — Br. David

"Humankind did not weave the web of life. We are but one strand within it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves."

Seattle was born in a Suquamish village along the Puget Sound, sometime around 1786. As a child he witnessed the arrival of the first whites in the Northwest. They were trappers and traders who did not come to stay. But for Seattle and his people, it was the beginning of irrevocable change.

In his early twenties Seattle was named the chief of his tribe. By this time the early white visitors had opened the way for an ever-increasing stream of settlers. It fell to Seattle to set a strategy for dealing with these invaders and their insatiable claims. Seattle rejected the option of violent resistance and put his trust in the possibilities of peaceful dialogue. But as the full intentions of the whites became clear his goal was reduced simply to ensuring the survival of his 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.

In 1830 Seattle and many of the Indians in Puget Sound converted to Christianity. As a leader of his people he tried to integrate the principles of his faith with the beliefs of his ancestors. But with each passing year it seemed that his traditional world was growing smaller. Ultimately, Seattle came to believe that the struggle with the whites really represented the contrast between conflicting spiritual values. In particular the Indians and the whites held to completely different understandings of the relationship between human beings and the earth.

The whites considered the land something to be bought and sold. As Seattle observed, "How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. . . . 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. We are part of the earth and it is part of us."

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.

In 1855 Seattle signed the Port Elliott Treaty, which transferred ancestral Indian lands to the federal government and established a reservation for Native American tribes in the Northwest region. The alternative, he believed, was the extinction of his people. But he took the opportunity to address a letter to President Franklin Pierce. It is a haunting and prophetic document, often cited today by the proponents of ecology. It certainly does reflect Seattle's profound ecological imagination, as well as the spiritual vision in which it was rooted:

We know that the White Man does not understand our ways. One portion of the 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.

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 humanity, and his compassion is equal for the red man and the white. The earth is precious to him, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator. . . Even the white man cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We shall see.

Chief Seattle died on June 7, 1866, on the Port Madison Reservation near the city which today bears his name.

See Also: "Chief Seattle's Message," in Robert Cooney and Helen Michalowski, eds., The Power of the People: Active Nonviolence in the United States (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1987). — Available from Amazon.com via this site.

The speech of Chief Seattle quoted in this essay is one of several second-hand texts of his speech.  There is no verbatim transcript in existence.  See another version, which was extensively researched, as well as recollected by Dr. Henry Smith in 1887.