Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion on our fathers for
centuries untold, and which, to us, looks eternal, may change. To-day it is
fair, to-morrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like the stars
that never set. What Seattle says, the great chief, Washington, can rely upon,
with as much certainty as our pale-face brothers can rely upon the return of
the seasons.
The son of the white chief says his father sends us
greetings of friendship and good will. This is kind, for we know he has little
need of our friendship in return, because his people are many. They are like
the grass that covers the vast prairies, while my people are few, and resemble
the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain.
The great, and I presume also good, white chief sends us
word that he wants to buy our lands but is willing to allow us to reserve
enough to live on comfortably. This indeed appears generous, for the red man
no longer has rights that he need respect, and the offer may be wise, also,
for we are no longer in need of a great country. There was a time when our
people covered the whole land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its
shell-paved floor. But that time has long since passed away with the greatness
of tribes now almost forgotten. I will not mourn over our untimely decay, nor
reproach my pale-face brothers for hastening it, for we, too, may have been
somewhat to blame.
When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary
wrong and disfigure their faces with black paint, their hearts, also, are
disfigured and turn black, and then their cruelty is relentless and knows no
bounds, and our old men are not able to restrain them.
But let us hope that hostilities between the red-man and his
pale-face brothers may never return. We would have everything to lose and
nothing to gain.
True it is that revenge, with our young braves, is
considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at
home in times of war, and old women who have sons to lose, know better.
Our great father, Washington, for I presume he is now our
father as well as yours, since George has moved his boundaries to the north;
our great and good father, I say, sends us word by his son, who, no doubt, is
a great chief among his people, that if we do as he desires, he will protect
us. His brave armies will be to us a bristling wall of strength, and his great
ships of war will fill our harbors so that our ancient enemies far to the
northward, the Simsiams and Haidas, will no longer frighten our women and old
men. Then he will be our father and we will be his children.
But can this ever be? Your God loves your people and hates
mine; he folds his strong arms lovingly around the white man and leads him as
a father leads his infant son, but he has forsaken his red children; he makes
your people wax strong every day, and soon they will fill the land; while our
people are ebbing away like a fast-receding tide, that will never flow again.
The white man's God cannot love his red children or he would protect them.
They seem to be orphans and can look nowhere for help. How then can we become
brothers? How can your father become our father and bring us prosperity and
awaken in us dreams of returning greatness?
Your God seems to us to be partial. He came to the white
man. We never saw Him; never even heard His voice; He gave the white man laws
but He had no word for His red children, whose teeming millions filled this
vast continent as the stars fill the firmament. No, we are two distinct races
and must ever remain so. There is little in common between us. The ashes of
our ancestors are sacred and their final resting place is hallowed ground,
while you wander away from the tombs of your fathers seemingly without regret.
Your religion was written on tables of stone by the iron
finger of an angry God, lest you might forget it. The red man could never
remember or comprehend it.
Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors, the dreams
of our old men, given 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 homes of their nativity
as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb. They wander off beyond the stars,
are soon forgotten, and never return. Our dead never forget the beautiful
world that gave them being. They still love its winding rivers, its great
mountains and its sequestered vales, and they ever yearn in tenderest
affection over the lonely-hearted living, and often return to visit and
comfort them.
Day and night cannot dwell together. The red man has ever
fled the approach of the white man, as the changing mists on the mountain side
flee before the blazing morning sun.
However, your proposition seems a just one, and I think my
folks will accept it and will retire to the reservation you offer them, and we
will dwell apart and in peace, for the words of the great white chief seem to
be the voice of nature speaking to my people out of the thick darkness that is
fast gathering around them like a dense fog floating inward from a midnight
sea.
It matters but little where we pass the remainder of our
days. They are not many. The Indian's night promises to be dark. No bright
star hovers about the horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance. Some
grim Nemesis of our race is on the red man's trail, and wherever he goes he
will still hear the sure approaching footsteps of the fell destroyer and
prepare 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
all the mighty hosts that once tilled this broad land or that now roam in
fragmentary bands through these vast solitudes will remain to weep over the
tombs of a people once as powerful and as hopeful as your own.
But why should we repine? Why should I murmur at the fate of
my people? Tribes are made up of individuals and are no better than they. Men
come and go like the waves of the sea. A tear, a tamanamus [a religious
ritualQEd.], a dirge, and they are gone from our longing eyes forever. Even
the white man, whose God walked and talked with him, as friend to friend, is
not exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We shall see.
We will ponder your proposition, and when we have decided we
will tell you. But should we accept it, I here and now make this the first
condition: That we will not be denied the privilege, without molestation, of
visiting at will the graves of our ancestors and friends. Every part of this
country is sacred to my people. Every hill-side, every valley, every plain and
grove has been hallowed by some fond memory or some sad experience of my tribe.
Even the rocks that seem to lie dumb as they swelter in the sun along the
silent seashore in solemn grandeur thrill with memories of past events
connected with the fate of my people, and the very dust under your feet
responds more lovingly to our footsteps than to yours, because it is the ashes
of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch,
for the soil is rich with the life of our kindred.
The sable braves, and fond mothers, and glad-hearted maidens,
and the little children who lived and rejoiced here, and whose very names are
now forgotten, still love these solitudes, and their deep fastnesses at
eventide grow shadowy with the presence of dusky spirits. And when the last
red man shall have perished from the earth and his memory among white men
shall have become a myth, these shores shall swarm with the invisible dead of
my tribe, and when your children's children shall think themselves alone in
the field, the shop, upon the highway or in the silence of the 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 shall be silent, and you
think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once
filled 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
altogether powerless.
