A Breif History of Cheif Seattle

Chief Seattle (‘Seattle’) was born in 1786 on or near what is now Blake Island in the state of Washington. He was born to the Dkhw’Duw’Absh or the Duwamish and the Dkhw’Suqw’Absh or Suquamish tribes which his father, Shweabe was Chief of the Suquamish. Seattle quickly earned a reputation of an understanding leader and a fierce warrior,ambushing and slaughtering groups of tribal raiders that posed a threat to his tribe. A reason why he was so intimidating was because he was tall for a Native American, standing nearly 6 foot tall. He was also an orator, his voice was known to carry for over a kilometre when he was addressing an audience! Naturally he inherited the rank of Chief from his Uncle. He took 2 wives from the village of Tola’Itu, his first one, La-Dalia died after bearing a daughter. He then had three sons and four daughters with his second wife, Olahl.

Seattle was slowly starting to lose ground to the more powerful tribe, the Patkanim when white settlers started colonising their lands in force. Seattle claimed to have seen ships from the Vancouver Expedition as he was exploring Puget Sound in 1792. The Chief was forced to move his people from their village to a different location.In the process he made friends with “Doc Maynard” who went on to be one of the founders of Seattle. This friendship between Seattle and Maynard was crucial in forming the city of Seattle. Maynard was the first doctor in Seattle, an accomplished businessman and an adventurous pioneer. Through knowing Maynard, Chief Seattle was able to negotiate peaceful terms between the white settlers and his tribe. Maynard later named the city Seattle after the Chief. Seattle was converted to Christianity and was baptised in the Roman Catholic Church in 1848. His new name was Noah under the Catholic Church but everyone still called him Chief Seattle.

After a few years of peace was broken in the Battle of Seattle in 1856. This short battle was between the tribes surrounding the newly found city of Seattle and the white settlers.Chief Seattle kept his people out of this battle and was relocated with the help of Maynard from the East to West of Puget sound. This had to happen since the U.S.S Decatur was anchored just outside Seattle and had all 16, 32 pounder main battle guns trained just outside the village. This was a crucial action by the settlers because in the end they only suffered 2 deaths but the Native Americans took a much bigger blow, losing 80 people in the attack and injuring over 20. In the end the raid was a failure and the Native Americans walked back to their village with grief among them. Without the ship the Native Americans may have stood a chance but the odds were against them in the end.

The ‘letter’ or speech

Chief Seattle’s speech is what made him so widely regarded in the Native American community. Apart from being a wise leader and a strong and brave warrior, Chief Seattle was not naïve to just let the white settlers come in and steal his land. Seattle was a peaceful leader and he knew that even if he went to war with the newcomers he would be outgunned, outnumbered and ultimately it would the death of him and his tribe. This is what led to the speech being written. He wanted to make a change, and since he was so widely known in Seattle (the city was named after him) and was friends with Doc Maynard, it made him the perfect person to stand up to the Government. His speech has been described as "powerful, bittersweet plea for respect of Native American rights and environmental values".[1]Unfortunately the speech was never written down by Seattle, so all we have now is second hand reports from journalists who attended the talk at the time. There are now over 100 reconstructions of his speech, some more religious, some more essay-like, but no one will ever know exactly what he said.

There is a lot of speculation regarding where and when this speech took place. The most common understanding was that Doc Maynard introduced Governor Stevens, and Governor Stevens briefly explained the Government’s mission which of course everyone already knew in the audience. Then Chief Seattle slowly rose and started to talk about the importance of his land and how the newcomers should treat their land if they were to buy it.

In 1993 Nancy Zussy identified the four most well-known textural variants to the speech:

“Version 1” The Smith version
“Version 2” The Arrowsmith version
“Version 3” The Steven/Perry version
“Version 4” A shortened Steven/Perry version with no known author

The oldest transcript of this speech appeared some 30 years later the after the Chief spoke in the Seattle Sunday Star. The column was written by Henry A. Smith who was a physician, poet, legislator and an early settler in Seattle. Smith was an attendant of Chief Seattle’s speech and said he had recorded “.... but a fragment of Chief Seattle’s speech”. The puzzling thing is about this is why did he wait 30 years to write this transcript? The most likely reason for Smith writing this recount was for political reasons, due to pressure mounting on the original pioneers of Seattle as new immigrants had started to overpower the original founders. People still speculate today as to whether Henry Smith was even at the event, because according to other witnesses recounts, things played out a lot differently, Unfortunately now there is no way to prove that anyone’s right.

Smith may have felt like the foundersof Seattle needed to say that big things had happened before they came, and the original founders hadn’t just paved the way for a bunch of newcomers to come and take over their city.

After Smith wrote his transcription there have been various rewrites usually tying in references to their (the authors) different religions. After 1960 a new era dawned for the Chief’s speech and its further amendments. It began with Professor William Arrowsmith, a Professor who ended up reigniting interest in the speech. After stumbling across it in the essays of the President of Washington State University, Arrowsmith was intrigued to find the quotes at the bottom from Smith and his recount,but not the from original author. Interested, Arrowsmith found the original version and decided he would take all the Victorian influences out of it and try to make it as if the Chief himself were speaking. The real reason why the speech gained popularity was because of a movie poster in 1972, advertising the movie Home, a small budget environmentalists movie. The movie’s producer wanted a poster that showed a distinguished Native American delivering a statement of concern for the environment. Chief Seattle and his speech suited this roleperfectly. The producer used Arrowsmith’s version because it was more authentic. Ted Perry the script writer interwove lines from other environmentalists into the poster speech, even though the producer didn’t give him any credit. He created his own version. Perry himself explaining what happened:

"I first heard a version of the text read by William Arrowsmith at the first Environmental Day celebration in 1970. I was there and heard him. He was a close friend. Arrowsmith's version hinted at how difficult it was for Seattle to understand the white man's attitude toward land, water, air, and animals. For the soundtrack of a documentary I had already proposed about the environment, I decided to write a new version, elaborating on and heightening what was hinted at in Arrowsmith's text ... While it would be easy to hide behind the producer's decision, without my permission, to delete my "Written by" credit when the film was finished and aired on television, the real problem is that I should not have used the name of an actual human being, Chief Seattle. That I could put words into the mouth of someone I did not know, particularly a Native American, is pure hubris if not racist. While there has been some progress in our knowledge of Native Americans, we really know very little. What we think we know is mediated by films, chance encounters, words, images and other stereotypes. They serve our worldview but they are not true." [2]

As it turns out the producer also changed the speech to comply with Baptist theology. This is Steven’s opinion on his work:

"I edited the speech to fit our needs [Baptists] more closely. There was no apple pie and motherhood and so I added the references to God and I am a savage to make the Radio and Television Commission happy ... I had edited scripts that did not have the Baptists' line dozens of times. This needed to be done so they could justify spending thousands of dollars on a film ... I eventually quit my job as a producer because I got tired of shoehorning those interests into scripts."[3]

This version of the speech is called the Perry/Stevens version and probably one of the more well known versions. This poster went viral but strangely the actual movie disappeared without a trace, probably because of budgeting constraints.The story also caught the attention of a number of scholars who were also intrigued about the story of the speech and wanted to have a go at rewriting the speech to what they thought was more authentic.

The letter was the same story as the speech only this time addressed to President Pierce. Even though it appeared in the Environmental Action magazine in 1972, it was a fraudulent copy made by Dale Jones who allegedly based it off of Henry A. Smith’s speech. Other than that there has been no trace of this letter which is quite a mystery. If this letter was written to President Pierce it would have had to pass through at least 6 departments before getting on the President’s desk. That is quite a paper trail for the letter to go unnoticed. This is why when the National Archives staff found no such evidence of this letter; they “concluded that the letter ... is probably spurious."

Cheif Seattles's Letter

Conclusion

There are a lot of copies of this letter floating around, over 100. There have been frauds, scams and great breakthroughs with this speech like in 1960 when Arrowsmith shined a new light on the speech. There have also been claims of a letter addressed to President Pierce at the time but that has also been proved spurious. All these versions of the speech have had one different thing between them, which is that everyone who has rewritten the speech has had kind of a theme in mind. Like if a scholar was writing it would be more factual and essay like. If a church member was writing it they would put references to god and make it compliable with their religion. This is why no one will ever know what Chief Seattle actually said because of that one reason. Nevertheless the government might have ignored the speech but it inspired people all over the world to do something to make a change in the environment around them. It also advocated for rules about how to treat the land which was eventually introduced. Who knows, the world might be a slightly different place if not for Chief Seattle.