The speech or "letter" attributed to Chief Seattle has been widely cited as a
"powerful, bittersweet plea for respect of Native American rights and environmental values".
[6]
But this document, which has achieved widespread fame thanks to its
promotion in the environmental movement, is of doubtful authenticity.
The evolution of the text of Chief Seattle's speech, from a flowery
Victorian paean to peace and territorial integrity, into a much briefer
environmentalist credo, has been chronicled by several historians. The
first attempt to reconstruct this history was a 1985 essay in the U.S.
National Archives'
Prologue magazine.
[7] A more scholarly essay by a German anthropologist followed in 1987.
[8]
In 1989, a radio documentary by Daniel and Patricia Miller resulted in
the uncovering of no fewer than 86 versions of Chief Seattle's speech.
This then prompted a new discussion, first in the
Seattle Weekly and then in
Newsweek.
[9][10] The historian Albert Furtwangler then undertook to analyze the evolution of Chief Seattle's speech in a full-length book,
Answering Chief Seattle (1997).
[11] More recently, Eli Gifford has written another full-length book,
The Many Speeches of Chief Seattle
(2015), which assembles further elements of the story, gives accurate
transcriptions of 11 versions of the speech, and explores possible
motivations for manipulating the words in each case.
[5]
The oldest version: 1887
The oldest extant record of this document is a transcript published in the
Seattle Sunday Star in 1887, in a column by
Henry A. Smith, a poet, doctor, and early white settler of the Seattle area.
[12]
Smith provides a transcript of a speech made by Chief Seattle 30 years
earlier, which Smith had attended and taken notes from. The occasion of
the speech was a visit by the newly appointed Governor,
Isaac Stevens. The governor's visit to a council of local tribal chiefs that year is corroborated by the historical record.
[13] Chief Seattle was the most influential chief in the area, so it is likely he would have been in attendance.
However the date, the location, and the actual words of Chief Seattle's
speech are disputed. For instance, Smith's article in the
Seattle Sunday Star
claims that the purpose of Governor Stevens's meeting was to discuss
the surrender or sale of the Indians' land to white settlers - but there
is no record to support that this was the purpose of Stevens's visit;
in fact, the purpose of the visit seems to have been to investigate
lands already considered to belong to the United States.
[14]
Moreover, contemporary witnesses don't place Smith at the 1854 meeting.
There is a written record of a later meeting between Governor Stevens
and Chief Seattle, taken by government interpreters at the
Point Elliott Treaty
signing on January 22, 1855. But the proceedings of this meeting bear
no resemblance to the reminiscence that Dr. Smith recorded in 1887.
[5][7]
According to Smith's recollection,
Doc Maynard
introduced Governor Stevens, who then briefly explained his mission,
which was already well understood by all present. Chief Seattle then
rose to speak. He rested his hand upon the head of the much smaller
Stevens, and declaimed with great dignity for an extended period. And
Smith then presents a detailed translation of the speech. But recent
scholarship questions the authenticity of Smith's version of the speech.
Chief Seattle most probably spoke in the
Lushootseed language, and someone then translated his words into
Chinook Jargon,
a limited trading language, which a third person then translated that
into English. But Smith's English version is in a flowery Victorian
prose, and Smith noted that he had recorded "but a fragment of his
[Seattle's] speech". Moreover, Smith's version of the speech does not
square with the recollections of other witnesses; and as we have seen,
Smith himself may not have been present as a witness. As a result of
such discrepancies, staff of the
National Archives in Washington, DC, concluded that the speech is most likely fiction.
[7][15]
However, a spokesperson for the Suquamish Nation has said that
according to their traditions, Dr. Smith consulted the tribal elders
numerous times before publishing his transcript of the speech in 1887.
The elders apparently saw the notes Dr. Smith took while listening to
the speech.
[citation needed]
The elders' approval of Smith's transcript, if real, would give that
version the status of an authentic version. Smith's notes are no longer
extant. They may have been lost in the Great Seattle Fire, when Smith's
office burned down.
Why, however, did Smith wait thirty years to publish his transcript
of the speech? It seems most likely that Smith's reason for publishing
the speech was political. Newly arrived immigrants were starting to
overpower the original pioneers who had dominated local politics. There
was a bitterly contested election, with one newspaper claiming these new
immigrants wanted "the overthrow of our institutions, ... rob you ...
of home, of country and of religion." When Smith had Chief Seattle
waxing rhetorical about the demise of the native peoples, was he also
talking about the demise of the original pioneers who found themselves
denounced as "obstacles in the way of progress," as "old mossbacks",
with some even calling for their hanging?
[5]
