In church yesterday morning, the priest referenced a quote attributed to Chief Seattle of the Lushootseed tribe in the Pacific Northwest. “Our God is the same God. You may think now that you own Him as you wish to own our land, but you cannot. He is the God of man, and His compassion is equal for red man and the white.”
The priest also quoted the Chief as saying, “We are all children of the Great Spirit, we all belong to Mother Earth. Our planet is in great trouble and if we keep carrying old grudges and do not work together, we will all die.”
The priest made those words relevant to us today, especially in the face of all the hate speech, mass shootings and terrorist attacks around the world.
I found the homily inspiring, and it validated what I have promoted here on the blog many times. We must look for ways to come together in peace, instead of pushing each other further and further across so many cultural and racial divides.
Not having heard of Chief Seattle before Sunday morning, I was curious to find out more about him when I got home. One surprising thing I discovered via SNOOPEs, is that the inspiring speech, from which those quotes were taken, was actually written by a screenwriter named Ted Perry, who wrote them for Home, a 1972 film about ecology. You can read the entire speech written by Perry HERE. No matter who wrote it, it is an inspiring speech and well worth your time to check it out.
In the SNOOPES article there was also some biographical information about Chief Seattle that I also found interesting. Born in 1786, he was a great speaker and skilled diplomat. His real name in the Lushootseed language was See-ahth.
Seattle was also a warrior with a considerable reputation for daring raids on other Indian tribes. After smallpox wiped out many of his people, he realized the inevitability of the coming tide of white settlement. In 1854 he made a speech to more than a thousand of his people gathered to greet the Government’s Indian superintendent, Isaac Stevens.
Most historians agree that the speech was delivered in the Salish dialect. A year later, the chief signed a treaty with the United States Government, ceding much of the area on which the city of Seattle now stands.
There is only one record of what Chief Seattle did say in 1854, a translation of the chief’s speech done by Dr. Henry Smith who published his recollection in 1887 — 33 years after it was given. According to Smith, Seattle merely praised the generosity of the President in buying his land.
Chief Seattle died in 1866, more than a hundred years before the words that would be attributed to him were penned.
So even though Chief Seattle did not give that much-quoted speech, he was an honored leader of his tribe, and well-respected by the white men who bought the Indian land. Otherwise, why would a city be named after him?
After church, I turned on my computer and saw this quote on Facebook: “Mean is easy. Mean is lazy. Mean is self-satisfied and slothful. You know what takes effort? Being kind. Being patient. Being respectful.” CNN Anchor Jake Tapper addressing graduates at UMass Amherst.
Was it a coincidence or serendipity? As our nation reels from another mass shooting at a school, this one in Sante Fe, Texas, we need more kindness, more patience, and more respect. Young people endowed with those virtues are far less likely to pick up a gun and kill their contemporaries than kids who have not had those virtues instilled in them by their parents.
What do you think? Can you see the correlation between the Chief Seattle quotes and that of Jake Tapper?