What is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around the pool at night? – Chief Seattle Ted Perry’s script for TV film Home, 1972.
Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man…cannot be exempt from the common destiny. – Chief Seattle Speech in 1854, published in Seattle Sunday Star in column by Dr. Henry A. Smith.
The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of the pond, the smell of the wind itself cleansed by a midday rain, or scented with pinon pine. The air is precious to the red man. – Chief Seattle Ted Perry’s script for TV film Home, 1972.
All things share the same breath – the beast, the tree, the man…the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. – Chief Seattle Ted Perry’s script for TV film Home, 1972.
My words are like the stars that never change. – Chief Seattle Speech in 1854, published in Seattle Sunday Star in column by Dr. Henry A. Smith.
We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of 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. – Chief Seattle Ted Perry’s script for TV film Home, 1972.
Whatever Seattle says, the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun or the seasons. – Chief Seattle Speech in 1854, published in Seattle Sunday Star in column by Dr. Henry A. Smith.
Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to restrain them. Thus it has ever been. – Chief Seattle Speech in 1854, published in Seattle Sunday Star in column by Dr. Henry A. Smith.
Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better. – Chief Seattle
Whatever Seattle says, the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun or the seasons. – Chief Seattle
Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever fled the approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before the morning sun. – Chief Seattle
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. – Chief Seattle
To us, the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. – Chief Seattle
Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. – Chief Seattle
Our people are ebbing away like a rapidly receding tide that will never return. The white man’s God cannot love our people, or He would protect them. – Chief Seattle
All things share the same breath – the beast, the tree, the man… the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. – Chief Seattle
Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to restrain them. Thus it has ever been. – Chief Seattle
What is man without the beasts? For if all the beast were gone, man would die of a great loneliness of the spirit. – Chief Seattle
Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. – Chief Seattle
When the last red man shall have perished from the earth and his memory among the white men shall have become a myth, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. – Chief Seattle
Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors – the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people. – Chief Seattle
If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? – Chief Seattle
