http://www.cris.com/~nlthomas/history/seattle1.html): is an atempt at
interpreting the different versions of the speech made by Chief Seattle.
Regardless of the exact words spoken, the statement on the environment,
culture, and the future of humanity.
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 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. 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. The 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 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 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 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 moon, 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 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,
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 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.
--
我達達的馬蹄....
#本篇轉載自交大資工精華區
#為其版主forjjlu之個人信件,感謝其惠允提供...
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按: 以下是 mail 給我上篇文章的大姐所說另寄的演講全文. :) by forjjlu
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大家好!這是另外一篇西雅圖酋長宣言的英文版本,和上週寄給大家的似乎相當不同
這一篇是一位在華勝頓州立大學的河川生態學教授所mail給我的,他本身對北美印地
安人文化及歷史也相當有興趣,大家若有興趣,可以照文中所提的WWW的位址連線讀
取相關資料。
程姐 (Wed Jun 5 10:49:15 1996)
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There is a great deal of controversy over the authenticity over
Chief Seattle's speech. "The Great Ecology"
(