Nation Follows Nation
They included in the book the speech below, one of the most famous by a Native American, the speech of Chief Seattle in 1854. It has been reproduced countless times and also rewritten and changed over the years to suit different peoples' needs. What I am pasting below is not the transcript of the speech because the speech was never written down. In fact it wasn't even in English, but was translated twice over before it arrived in English even as it was being spoken. The version I am including here was published in 1887 by someone who was there, but who admitted to this copy not being authentic, but being based on notes and recollections. In Guam history we have a similar problem where the content of a speech is written down, and while it is incredibly suspect, it may nonetheless be an important document to give insight to that historical moment.
One of the things that drew me to this speech and made a connection to Chamorro culture was towards the end where Chief Seattle invokes the inevitable end of the United States.
A few more moons, a few more winters, and not one of the descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful and hopeful than yours. But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people? 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 whose God walked and talked with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see.When local historian collected oral history and cultural knowledge from Chamorro elders, there was one saying that truly struck out at me, that represented the Chamorro as a colonized, yet still consciously sovereign subject. The Chamorro who was a resident in a colony, who lived and breathed colonial logic and power, who was constantly being marginalized and oppressed, but who saw themselves as being fundamentally different from their colonizer. No matter how much their life was wrapped in the colonizer's power and influence, they still believed themselves to be something different, their own subject, with their own context to the world. This was not a belief that the colonizers were not powerful, but a recognition of the fact that they could never be as powerful as they claimed to be and that history and time could never end with them. There would always be something more.
As those elders would say, "Chumachalek hao pa'go, tumatanges hao agupa'. I agupa', ti agupa'-mu." Just because one flag flies over the island at present doesn't mean it always will and doesn't mean it won't be replaced. Many of those elders witnessed the power on Guam shift four times in forty years, from the Spanish, to the Americans, to the Japanese and then back to the Americans. For them, life was staying alive and enduring, it was not saluting the flags of whichever colonizer was now in charge. There was a sovereign timelessness to the Chamorro. This is something which has now been lost as Chamorros as a community tend to see life beginning and ending with their current colonizer and not learning this simple lesson.
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Version 1 (below) appeared in the Seattle Sunday Star on Oct. 29, 1887, in a column by Dr. Henry A. Smith.
"CHIEF SEATTLE'S 1854 ORATION" - ver . 1
AUTHENTIC TEXT OF CHIEF SEATTLE'S TREATY ORATION 1854
Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for
centuries untold, and which to us appears changeless and eternal, may
change. Today is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My
words are like the stars that never change. 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. The white chief says that
Big Chief at Washington sends us greetings of friendship and goodwill.
This is kind of him for we know he has little need of our friendship in
return. His people are many. They are like the grass that covers vast
prairies. My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a
storm-swept plain. The great, and I presume -- good, White Chief sends
us word that he wishes to buy our land but is willing to allow us enough
to live comfortably. This indeed appears just, even generous, for the
Red Man no longer has rights that he need respect, and the offer may be
wise, also, as we are no longer in need of an extensive country.
There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a
wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since
passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful
memory. I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor
reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been
somewhat to blame.
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. Thus it was when the white man began to push our
forefathers ever westward. But let us hope that the hostilities
between us may never return. We would have everything to lose and
nothing to gain. 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.
Our
good father in Washington--for I presume he is now our father as well
as yours, since King George has moved his boundaries further north--our
great and good father, I say, sends us word that if we do as he desires
he will protect us. His brave warriors will be to us a bristling wall
of strength, and his wonderful ships of war will fill our harbors, so
that our ancient enemies far to the northward -- the Haidas and
Tsimshians -- will cease to frighten our women, children, and old men.
Then in reality he will be our father and we his children. But can that
ever be? Your God is not our God! Your God loves your people and
hates mine! He folds his strong protecting arms lovingly about the
paleface and leads him by the hand as a father leads an infant son.
But, He has forsaken His Red children, if they really are His. Our God,
the Great Spirit, seems also to have forsaken us.
Your God makes your people wax stronger every day. Soon they will fill
all the land. 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. They seem to be orphans who can look nowhere for
help. How then can we be brothers? How can your God become our God
and renew our prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness?
If we have a common Heavenly Father He must be partial, for He came to
His paleface children.
We never saw Him. He gave you laws but had no word for His red children
whose teeming multitudes once filled this vast continent as stars fill
the firmament. No; we are two distinct races with separate origins and
separate destinies. There is little in common between us.
To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is
hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors and
seemingly without regret. Your religion was written upon tablets of
stone by the iron finger of your God so that you could not forget. The
Red Man could never comprehend or remember it. 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.
Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as
they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars.
They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this
beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant
valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered
vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond
affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the
happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them.
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. However, your proposition seems fair and I think that my people
will accept it and will retire to the reservation you offer them. Then
we will dwell apart in peace, for the words of the Great White Chief
seem to be the words of nature speaking to my people out of dense
darkness.
It matters little where we pass the remnant of our days. They will not
be many. The Indian's night promises to be dark. Not a single star of
hope hovers above his horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance.
Grim fate seems to be on the Red Man's trail, and wherever he will hear
the approaching footsteps of his fell destroyer and prepare stolidly to
meet his doom, as does the wounded doe that hears the approaching
footsteps of the hunter.
A few more moons, a few more winters, and not one of the descendants of
the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in happy
homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the
graves of a people once more powerful and hopeful than yours. But why
should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people? 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 whose God walked and
talked with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common
destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see.
We will ponder your proposition and when we decide we will let you know.
But should we accept it, I here and now make this condition that we
will not be denied the privilege without molestation of visiting at any
time the tombs of our ancestors, friends, and children. Every part of
this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside,
every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or
happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be
dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill
with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people,
and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to
their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our
ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch.
Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy hearted maidens, and even
the little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief
season, will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet
shadowy returning spirits. And when the last Red Man shall have
perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the
White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe,
and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field,
the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless
woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place
dedicated to solitude.
At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you
think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that
once filled them and still love this beautiful land.
The White Man will never be alone.
Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not
powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of
worlds.
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