0:00

Welcome to Stuff you missed in History

0:02

Class from how Stuff Works dot com.

0:12

Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

0:14

I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.

0:17

We are going to talk today about something you may

0:19

have learned about in school that you may

0:21

have learned about wrongly, and

0:24

that is Chief Seattle in a very famous

0:26

oration that he made allegedly in

0:28

eighteen fifty four. Except except

0:31

probably not. The reality is a little different

0:33

from what people are usually taught. Very

0:35

true, so Chief Seattle really

0:37

was a real person. He was

0:39

chief of the Suquamish and other related

0:42

tribes around the area now known as

0:44

Seattle through the mid eighteen

0:46

hundreds when settlers were moving

0:48

into the area, and what

0:50

many people remember him for, in addition

0:52

to the city of Seattle being named

0:55

after him, is a speech that he gave,

0:57

although many versions of the speech that

1:00

circulate are absolutely not by

1:02

him at all. We will

1:04

talk a little bit more about that and just a bit

1:07

so for a little bit of background about

1:10

the Sequamish people. Suquamish, which

1:12

is an Americanized pronunciation of their name,

1:15

actually means a place of clear salt water,

1:18

and that they and other nearby tribes

1:21

were primarily fishers, hunters, and

1:23

gatherers at the time

1:25

before American settlement

1:27

of that part of the world. They

1:29

lived in cedar plank long houses

1:32

in the winter, and then in the rest of

1:34

the year they would travel around using dugout

1:36

cedar canoes and stay in temporary

1:38

camps that were made of structures made

1:41

from tree sap saplings that were covered

1:43

with mats made of woven cat tail.

1:46

And they also were really well known for making

1:48

these hard watertight baskets from coiled

1:51

cedar roots, and they could actually

1:53

use these baskets for cooking. They would heat rocks

1:55

up in the fire and drop them into liquid filled baskets

1:58

to create a very heated water source

2:01

which they could then drop other things into you and cook

2:04

them. Yes, this is a tribe that still

2:06

exists today. It has about

2:08

nine and fifty members and about half

2:10

of those members live on a reservation

2:13

up in the Pacific northwest UM.

2:16

The most notable famous

2:18

person from this tribe is Chief

2:20

Seattle. And that also is an

2:22

Americanized pronunciation, like

2:25

many non English names, and includes

2:28

characters and phonemes that don't exist

2:30

in English. UM and an

2:32

approximation of the actual pronunciation

2:35

of it is seat, and

2:37

we don't really end words with in

2:40

that way, and so it's sort

2:42

of gradually became softened to Seattle.

2:45

According to the Sequamish Foundation, the

2:47

tribe doesn't really object to

2:49

him being called Seattle, although

2:52

he did himself have some misgivings about

2:54

the city being named for him at various

2:56

points in his life. Uh. He's

2:58

sort of worried that, because of

3:00

the importance of names in his culture,

3:03

that having people repeatedly used his name

3:05

in a context that was not about

3:07

him and kind of a casual, possibly

3:10

dismissive way, might cause problems

3:12

after he was gone. But before his death,

3:14

reportedly he had come to think of it as a

3:17

mark of honor. Now we

3:19

don't know a whole lot about Seattle's

3:22

early years because he doesn't really appear in the

3:25

historical record until he's an adult.

3:27

Right there. There are a few

3:29

official uh and tribal

3:32

records from various points

3:34

in his life. A lot of the earliest

3:36

part. You have really a lot of different sources that

3:38

contradict each other. Even when

3:40

you look at tribal sources, some of them contradict

3:42

each other. Uh.

3:45

By his own account, he was born on

3:47

Blake Island and central Puget Sound,

3:49

and his mother was named Shulizza. She

3:52

was a Dwamish woman from Green River, and

3:55

his father was shwi Abe from

3:57

the Suquamish village and Agate Pass.

3:59

So he had a mother who was Duomish

4:02

and a father who was Squamish, and so

4:04

his his bloodline sort of united

4:06

those two tribes. Um

4:08

When he was born, it was a time when huge

4:11

amounts of illness were spreading through the Native

4:13

American population. About

4:15

thirty percent of the population in that

4:17

area died within eighty

4:20

years after first contact with the

4:22

white settlers because of introduced diseases,

4:25

and by Seattle's own account, he witnessed

4:28

the first contact between the Pacific Northwest

4:30

and settlers when George Vancouver

4:32

reached Bainbridge Island in sevent in

4:35

the h M. S Discovery. Yes Uh

4:38

Seattle had two important

4:41

events that led to his becoming chief.

4:43

The first was that he went on a vision quest

4:46

for spirit power as a youth and he

4:48

received thunderbird power. Um

4:50

thunder and lightning had a really strong spiritual

4:52

significance, and thunder power was said to

4:55

give a person power as a

4:57

warrior and a speaker. There

4:59

are accounts of addle saying that he had a great

5:01

boom booming voice, and that if he yelled

5:03

at you, the ground would physically tremble,

5:06

and that when he gave speeches he could be heard like

5:09

half a mile away, like there was a lot tied

5:11

to him this idea of voice and

5:13

speech and very powerful speech. And

5:16

the second other thing that is an

5:18

important part of the story

5:21

of him becoming chief is that while defending

5:23

a settlement from raiders traveling down the

5:25

White River, he had warriors chopped

5:27

down trees just downriver of a particularly

5:30

dangerous bend, and the incoming

5:32

raiders canoes crashed and they couldn't

5:34

get through, so their water their riders

5:37

were spilled into the water. And it's

5:40

fairly easy to defend yourself against people

5:42

who are floundering in the water versus

5:44

coming at you rapidly on boat. Right,

5:46

the incoming raiders were handily dispatched

5:48

when they came around this like treacherous

5:51

curve and crashed into a tree, which is pretty

5:53

ingenious. Right. Word spread of

5:55

that he was named to be an important chief,

5:58

and he became known in his leadership

6:00

as an intelligent and formidable leader.

6:04

There are several sources that say that he owned

6:06

slaves who he either freed after

6:08

signing treaties with the settlers or after

6:11

the emancipation Proclamation. There

6:13

sources kind of contradict each other on when

6:15

he's freed the slaves that belonged to

6:18

him, but owning slaves is a pretty

6:20

common practice in many tribes. Often

6:22

people from the opposing tribe would kind

6:24

of be spoils of war and

6:27

would become the slaves

6:29

of the conquering tribe, which is pretty

6:31

common throughout all history and many

6:33

cultures. Yeah, I think I think

6:35

some people have the mistaken idea, idea,

6:39

Uh, there's only one culture that enslaved

6:41

other people, and there are many cultures that have

6:44

enslaved other people. But

6:46

onto his wives. So, his first

6:48

wife, Ladelia, he was really quite deeply

6:51

in love with, and she died

6:53

shortly after giving birth to their first child,

6:55

Kiki so Blue, who

6:57

was also known to the settlers as Princess

6:59

and Jeline. She's a notable historical

7:02

figure in that area and the area

7:04

as well. Um Seattle

7:06

was really grief stipped stricken when his wife died,

7:09

and he only talked about her openly much much

7:11

later in his later years, he

7:13

got married again, to Uh,

7:16

and I am going to have trouble with this pronunciation

7:18

um YoY ill. And

7:21

they had two daughters and three sons together.

7:24

Now, an interesting part of his story is

7:26

that he was actually baptized

7:28

into the Catholic Church. I

7:31

think sometimes it's easy to forget

7:33

that there really was some blending of culture

7:35

going on. Uh. And

7:37

after the death of one of his sons was when

7:39

he was baptized, and he took the name Noah Seattle

7:42

at that time and his children were raised

7:44

in the Catholic faith. And after

7:46

Seattle's conversion, he focused less on

7:49

defending and occupying his territory

7:51

and more on building peaceful relations within

7:54

the tribe and with the settlers

7:56

that were coming in right. The American

7:58

settlers had gotten to the a Puget

8:00

Sound area around eighteen forty six,

8:03

and Seattle established himself from

8:05

the very start as a welcoming

8:08

and peaceful presence. He tended to

8:10

make friends with settlers. He

8:12

instructed the people in his tribes

8:14

to try to help people. They

8:17

established fisheries in conjunction

8:20

with the settlers, and in particular,

8:23

he was very close friends with a man named

8:25

doctor David S. Maynard, who was known as

8:27

Doc Doc Maynard was the first

8:29

doctor and merchant in Seattle, UM,

8:31

and he was the prominent person. He owned most

8:34

of the land that is Pioneer Square in Seattle

8:37

today, and the settlement

8:39

that actually became known as Seattle

8:41

was established in eighteen fifty two, which is

8:43

just six short years after the American

8:46

settlers landed in the Puget

8:48

Sound area. So in

8:50

March eighteen fifty three, Washington was

8:52

separated out from the Oregon Territory

8:55

and in October Governor Isaac Stevens,

8:57

who was thirty five at the time, arrived in Olympia,

9:00

the capital of Washington. In addition

9:02

to being governor of the territory, he was also

9:04

the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and

9:06

one of his jobs as the governor

9:09

and as the Commissioner for Indian Affairs was

9:11

to secure land for the Transcontinental

9:14

Railroad, and that was going

9:16

to require the local tribes to see

9:18

their land to him. So it's in this

9:20

context that Seattle has met

9:22

Stevens for the first time and Stephen

9:24

wants to secure the land. That Chief

9:27

Seattle reportedly gave a speech. Allegedly

9:30

this was delivered to Stevens or

9:32

in the presence of him on the steps

9:34

of Doc Maynard's office after

9:36

he was introduced to Stevens and heard that Stevens

9:39

wanted to to get the local land from

9:41

the native population. Um.

9:44

According to what has been reported,

9:47

this happened on Steven's first visit

9:49

into the town. But that's a little hard

9:51

to concretely verify

9:55

because we only have a few situations

9:58

in that the history of the area when we

10:00

know that Seattle and Stevens were in the same place

10:02

at the same time. So there's been a lot

10:04

of speculation about when exactly

10:07

this speech may have taken place, and

10:09

it in many of the accounts where it happened

10:12

very um, almost immediately

10:14

after they met. It's a little

10:16

bit tricky to get your head around the

10:18

idea of this great speech being made

10:20

pretty quickly after, like a handshake in a quick

10:22

discussion right there there. Yeah,

10:24

we'll talk about that as we talk about

10:27

the text of the speech a little bit. Uh.

10:29

This is a speech that some people may have read

10:31

in school. What they read in school may

10:33

not have been remotely accurate. And

10:36

here's why. Um. The first speech

10:39

was purportedly recorded by a

10:41

doctor Henry Smith as notes as

10:44

the address was was delivered Um.

10:47

He then reconstructed that

10:50

speech from his notes and published

10:52

it in the Seattle Sunday Star in eight seven,

10:55

so it was thirty two or thirty three years after

10:57

it was reportedly delivered. Um.

11:00

Occasionally people say that this

11:02

speech was made at the signing of the Point Elliott

11:05

Treaty. We know for sure this is not

11:07

the case because, uh,

11:10

Smith says pretty specifically, this happened

11:12

in Seattle on the steps

11:14

of Doc Maynard's office. That is not

11:16

where the Point Elliott Treaty was signed. And

11:19

Smith was also not present at Point elliotts

11:21

and he would have not been able to make notes.

11:23

No. Uh. The second

11:25

version is basically an edited, rewritten

11:28

version of Smith's that was published

11:30

in the Seattle Sunday Star, which was done by

11:32

a poet named William Arrismith. This

11:35

is the same content, but the grammar and

11:37

structure are different, so it's sort of like updating

11:40

the Victorian English

11:42

record to be a little bit more modernized

11:45

in its tone in voice. And

11:47

then the third and most famous iteration

11:50

of the speech that's attributed to Chief Seattle

11:52

is reported to be a letter that Chief

11:55

Seattle Seattle wrote to the President, which

11:57

would have been either Polk or Pierce, depending on

12:00

who you're looking at in terms of who

12:02

cites this speech. But it was actually

12:05

written not at all by Seattle.

12:07

It was written so much later seventies

12:11

by a guy named Ted Perry for an environmental

12:13

film called Home, which was written for the Southern

12:15

Baptist Convention. Uh,

12:17

it's this is where it just this is

12:20

a lot of people really dwell on the speech and whether

12:22

it was authentic. It pretty clearly

12:25

was not. But this speech has been

12:27

quoted in numerous anthologies. It was

12:29

made into a children's book called Brother Eagle

12:31

Sister Sky. Joseph Campbell talked

12:33

about it in the Power of Myth. It's

12:36

like made it onto bumper stickers

12:38

and T shirts all over the place. It

12:40

took on a life of its own, it really did. And

12:42

it sort of starts with this, uh,

12:44

this thing that was published in the Seattle Sunday Star.

12:46

It starts with some similarities to that, and then

12:49

it veers off in a very environmental

12:51

direction, with very bumper

12:54

sticker quotable quotes in

12:56

it. Um, we know for sure

12:58

that this was not a letter to the president.

13:01

Um. In addition to the fact that James K. Polk

13:03

was dead in fifty four. There's not any

13:05

record of any such letter going

13:08

from Seattle to the president, and

13:10

a letter from a Native American chief to

13:12

the President would have made several bureaucratic

13:14

stops on the way, and there's no record of it

13:16

in any of those places. There's also

13:18

no record of Chief Seattle asking

13:20

anyone to write a letter for him,

13:22

and since he was illiterate, he would have needed to do

13:25

that. And then the cherry on top, Ted

13:27

Perry wrote it, and he says he wrote He says

13:29

he wrote it. He acknowledges authorship of it.

13:31

Right. So I'm going to take a minute and just sort

13:33

of read a little snippet of

13:36

the Seattle Sunday Star version

13:38

and the Ted Perry version, and the there's

13:40

a twofold purpose here. One is to give you an idea

13:42

of the tone of the

13:44

speech that was allegedly given

13:46

originally, and the other is to give you an idea of

13:49

how completely different from that the Ted

13:51

Perry version is. And we're gonna

13:53

talk a little bit more about the Sunday Star version

13:55

in a minute. So this

13:57

is a snippet from the Seattle

14:00

Sunday Star version. Chief Seattle says,

14:03

your God is not our God. Your

14:06

God loves your people and hates mine. He

14:08

folds his strong, protecting arms

14:10

lovingly about the pale face and leaves

14:13

him by the hand as a father leads an infant

14:15

son. But he has forsaken his red

14:18

children, if they are really his our

14:20

God, the Great Spirit seems

14:22

also to have forsaken us. Your

14:25

God makes your people wax stronger every

14:27

day. Soon they will fill all the

14:29

land. Our people are ebbing

14:31

away like a rapidly receding tide

14:33

that will never return. The white man's

14:36

God cannot love our people, or

14:38

he would protect them. They seem to

14:40

be orphans who can look nowhere for help.

14:42

How then can we be brothers. It's

14:45

very sad, it is, But it's

14:47

also very weird when you remember that he was a Catholic.

14:50

Yes, it's it's weird. With a lot of

14:52

context that we'll talk about in more

14:54

detail. Um, the whole of

14:56

it has been categorized into this idea

14:59

of a fair el speech. There

15:01

are several speeches delivered by Native

15:03

Americans within that era that that sort

15:05

of lament the death

15:07

of Native American culture and the face

15:10

of white settlement. Another

15:12

really famous one would be Chief's Chief

15:15

Joseph gave such an address.

15:17

Um, we'll talk a little bit more about why that interpretation

15:20

of this is kind of problematic in a

15:22

few minutes. But here's a piece of

15:24

the Ted Perry version. Uh. And it does

15:26

start off following some similar points

15:28

to what I just read, but then it goes into this environmental

15:31

direction, with things like you

15:33

must teach your children that the ground beneath

15:35

their feet is the ashes of our grandfathers,

15:38

so that they will respect the land. Tell

15:40

your children that the earth is rich with the lives

15:43

of our kin. Teach your children

15:45

that what we will have taught our children, that

15:47

the earth is our mother. Whatever

15:49

befall the earth befalls the sons

15:51

of the earth. If men spit upon

15:53

the ground, they spit upon themselves.

15:56

This we knew. The earth does not

15:58

belong to man. Man belongs to the

16:00

earth. This we know. All

16:02

things are connected, like the blood which unites

16:04

one family. All things are connected.

16:07

Whatever befall the earth befalls the sons

16:09

of the earth. Man did not weave the

16:12

web of life. He is nearly a strand

16:14

in it. Whatever he does to the web,

16:16

he does to himself. That

16:19

has two bits of it that often show

16:21

up on T shirts and bumper stickers and

16:23

that kind of thing. Well, and it's easy to see why. I

16:25

mean, it is very moving

16:28

and you know, really quotable,

16:30

very quotable, sort of poignant from

16:33

an ecological standpoint, which

16:36

I think part of the reason that myth

16:38

grows and you know, continues

16:41

this attribution of these words with

16:43

Chief Seattle is that we normally

16:47

associate that sort of awareness of the

16:49

earth and the

16:51

planet as something bigger

16:53

than just what we're you know, sort of running

16:56

on day to day. We associate

16:58

that closeness more with a native and Arikans than

17:00

we do with the European settlers. Right,

17:02

it really did take on a weird

17:05

life of its own. Um And the reason

17:07

it's so quotable is because it was written for

17:09

a film. It was written to be

17:11

quotable. Yes, So I've

17:14

read lots of things that kind of dissect all

17:16

the ways in which that particular version

17:19

of the address does not make any sense

17:21

in the context of the time. But we're not going to

17:23

really get into them, because we know the

17:25

real story already that Ted Perry

17:27

wrote it, Like, we don't really need to go and dissect

17:29

all the ways in which it was not would not make

17:31

sense for Chief Seattles who have said something about

17:33

trains when he never saw a train, because

17:36

we know that Ted Perry wrote it. So for the

17:38

really the rest of this podcast, the the version

17:40

of the address that we're talking about is the one that

17:42

was printed in the Seattle Sunday

17:44

Star. Um. It was

17:46

reprinted many times throughout the year. Was reprinted,

17:49

not not as many times as the Ted Perry version,

17:51

but it did get it got its share

17:53

of attention. UM.

17:55

At various points that

17:58

text was reprinted and pam flits

18:00

and books and histories and things like that. At

18:03

some point along the line, somebody added a thirteen

18:05

word finish. Um. He he

18:07

ends with the idea of not to

18:09

dismiss the dead because the dead are not powerless.

18:13

And somebody added a sort of thirteen word

18:15

word coded that says dead. I say

18:18

there is no death, only a change of worlds.

18:21

And that's not in the original Sunday

18:23

Star version. So that got added in and

18:25

then sort of picked up and passed along as it was reprinted.

18:29

Um. We're gonna sort of talk

18:31

now about how even when we

18:33

have this text that came from the Seattle Sunday

18:35

star. We're still not really sure how authentic

18:37

it is or how will it actually represents the words

18:39

that were spoken at the time. And

18:42

it begins with the guy who wrote it down.

18:44

Uh. Dr Henry Smith was a scholar

18:47

and source has said that he was bilingual

18:49

in English and Duwamish. And that is

18:51

a little weird because what

18:54

the Duwamish tribes actually spoke was

18:56

a language called the show Seed. I

18:58

apologize if I have pronounced that wrongly. Um.

19:01

Any address that Chief Seattle gave would

19:03

have been made in this language and then translated

19:06

to the Chinnook jargon, which was sort

19:08

of a common tongue uniting all

19:10

of the people that lived in that in that area. Then

19:13

it would have been translated into into English.

19:16

We don't really know which of the versions Dr

19:18

Smith was listening to when he took his notes, um.

19:21

And it is worth noting that the fact that Seattle

19:23

either didn't speak at the jargon or

19:26

said he didn't speak the jargon jargon kind

19:28

of sets him apart from other people

19:31

in the area, Like, that's kind of a weird decision

19:33

to make to say, I just I don't speak this common

19:35

tongue. I lead all of these tribes who speak a language

19:38

I do not, right, Um, but that meant

19:40

that he had to have an interpreter everywhere, which

19:42

sort of became a mark of status,

19:44

Like, if we are going to entertain this,

19:46

this diplomat from these tribes, we're

19:48

going to need to make sure that we do this thing of

19:51

getting an interpreter for him.

19:53

So we don't really know which of these three

19:55

versions that were probably being delivered

19:58

was the one that Dr Smith took

20:01

his notes from. And we do know.

20:03

I mean, he is a fairly reliable figure

20:05

in that he was the superintendent of local schools,

20:08

he was a member of the legislature. So

20:10

it's not like he was just a

20:13

self proclaimed scholar who swooped in and claimed

20:15

to understand these things. He really was pretty ingrained

20:18

in the area. Um,

20:21

you know, he wasn't just a someone

20:23

claiming to be knowledgeable

20:25

about these things. He was an established part of the community.

20:28

But the place where it gets a little weird,

20:30

though, is that the column and the Sunday Star

20:33

where he published this speech, in

20:35

addition to it being thirty two or thirty

20:37

three years after the fact, was part of

20:39

an eleven part series that was celebrating

20:41

the pioneers of Seattle. Um,

20:43

it was, as we often see

20:46

generational divides happening. There was this

20:48

generational divide happening between the

20:50

people known as the Old Seattle, which

20:52

were the pioneers that had settled the area and

20:54

established the city, and New

20:56

Seattle, which was the young entrepreneurs

20:59

who were graduately taking those people's

21:01

places in society. So

21:03

the fact that he was trying to put

21:05

Old Seattle in its best light might

21:08

have influenced the way Smith

21:10

reinterpreted and reconstructed

21:12

his notes when he was making the version

21:14

that he put in the Seattle Sunday Star. And

21:18

even his description of Seattle at the

21:20

address kind of exemplifies this.

21:23

He describes the chief as putting his

21:25

hand on the head of a visible nobleman

21:27

and then taking up a posture that resembles what

21:29

we think of in ancient Roman

21:31

senators. Yeah, Like, if if

21:33

you look at old pictures of people giving orations,

21:36

like paintings of people giving orations in Rome,

21:38

and they have this very noble bearing and they have sort

21:40

of a hand lifted up, that's that's

21:42

the portrait that Smith paints when

21:44

he's introducing this speech. Um,

21:48

it definitely comes off as prophetic

21:50

because it talks a lot about the decline of

21:52

the Native American population in the face of

21:54

white settlers. It's

21:57

possible that the reason that it comes off

21:59

as prophetic is is because Smith

22:02

reconstructed it with knowledge of what happened

22:05

in the next thirty years, which really was

22:07

an orchestrated attempt by the government

22:10

and lots of places to push

22:12

Native Americans out of land and

22:14

to break up tribes

22:17

so that their original culture would be

22:20

less prevalent or or just removed

22:22

from their way of life. Like he knew

22:24

about all that stuff because it had

22:26

happened in the interim, right, it had happened

22:29

in the interim. Another thing that had happened

22:31

in the interim was the what we mentioned a little

22:33

earlier, which was chiefs Joe's I sort of

22:35

farewell speech that happened

22:37

in eighteen seventy seven. So it's possible

22:40

that some of the fatalism and the tone

22:43

is influenced by

22:45

Smith's knowledge of what happened later and

22:47

of the kind of speeches that other Native Americans

22:50

we're making elsewhere in the

22:52

United States. And additionally,

22:54

it's we should note that Seattle already

22:57

had a reputation for being really friendly

22:59

and welcoming to the white settlers

23:01

that were coming long before Governor Stephen's

23:03

arrival. So it's pretty uncharacteristic

23:06

that he would suddenly have this sort of negative,

23:10

um, very dark speech.

23:12

It was full of pessimism and mourning and

23:15

it's a sense of impending doom. But he had

23:17

a pretty favorable relationship with a

23:19

lot of white settlers

23:22

in the area, so it seems that

23:24

he may have been concerned about about

23:27

land being removed from his tribe.

23:30

But the overwhelming sense

23:32

of sadness um seems

23:34

possibly not characteristic of

23:37

of his other encounters with white

23:39

settlers. And there's

23:41

also no record of this speech in the Smithsonium.

23:44

It's not in the National Archives, it's not in the Library

23:46

of Congress. The primary source that we

23:48

have is something that was written down

23:51

in the note form and note starting a note

23:53

form more than more than thirty years after the fact.

23:56

We do though have as a reference

23:59

to short speech is that Seattle made

24:01

at the Point Elliott Treaty Council, which

24:03

was from December eighteen

24:06

fifty four UM. And these are from the

24:08

record of the proceedings and the Bureau

24:10

of Indian Affairs and the National Archives.

24:13

They are so dissimilar in style

24:15

and wor wording to the Seattle Sunday

24:17

Star piece. They're so

24:20

different. I can read you both of them, which

24:22

I am going to do. Um. The first

24:24

is I look upon you as my father.

24:27

I and the rest regard you as such. All

24:29

of the Indians have the same good feeling toward

24:32

you, and we'll send it in paper to the Great

24:34

Father. All of the men, old

24:37

men, women and children rejoice that

24:39

he has sent you to take care of

24:41

them. My mind is like yours.

24:43

I don't want to say more. My heart is

24:46

very good towards Dr Maynard. I

24:48

want always to get medicine from him.

24:51

That's the thing. One. The other

24:53

is is presumably after the

24:56

treaty was signed, and he says, now

24:58

by this we make friends and put away

25:00

all bad feelings, if ever we had any.

25:03

We are the friends of the Americans.

25:05

All the Indians are of the same mind. We

25:08

look upon you as our father. We will

25:10

never change our minds, but since you have been

25:12

to see us, we will always be the same. Now,

25:15

now do you send this paper so

25:18

vastly different in tone from

25:21

from this other address that

25:23

was supposedly delivered. You

25:25

know, within a year or so of this. Um,

25:29

we could get into things that are kind of troubled,

25:32

like the deferential tone that that people

25:34

might think is is troubling

25:36

in this particular set of addresses. But I'm

25:38

more interested in

25:40

looking at how that sounds

25:43

so much different from this thing that was allegedly delivered

25:45

on Documentard's office steps.

25:48

Yes, and several people that were supposedly

25:51

there have no had no memory

25:53

of such an address that was that longer impassioned.

25:56

A local interpreter by the name of BF Shaw

25:58

was there, he didn't remember it. David S.

26:00

Maynard's widow, Catherine, was there,

26:02

and she had no recollection of a long and passion

26:05

speech. Uh. And there aren't any other

26:07

contemporary records of Seattle delivering

26:09

any speeches like it. Uh.

26:11

You know, the newspaper in Olympia did not report

26:13

any similar things. There's really

26:16

no historical record of

26:18

speeches of that nature being made by him.

26:21

Uh. One of the primary chroniclers

26:23

of the history of the Pacific Northwest

26:25

from that time is a man named Clarence

26:28

B. Bagley. He moved with his

26:30

family to the Pacific Northwest when he was

26:32

nine, and, in addition to working

26:34

a lot of other jobs, from painting to running

26:37

minds. He was a newspaperman, and he became

26:39

like a really prominent local

26:41

historian. He was part

26:43

of the founding of the Washington State Historical

26:45

Society, and he wrote to three volume

26:48

histories, one of Seattle and one of King County,

26:50

which is the county that Seattle is in UM,

26:53

and both of these are still looked on as achievements

26:55

in the documenting of the Pacific Northwest

26:58

history. UM. He mentions

27:00

more than once in his book that Chief

27:02

Seattle and Doc Maynard were great

27:04

friends. UM, and this speech supposedly

27:07

happened on Doc Maynard's office steps.

27:09

So it seems sort of odd too many

27:12

historians today that the

27:14

friendship between Seattle and

27:16

UH and Doc Maynard would have been important

27:19

enough to mention more than once in these histories,

27:21

but that a speech of that length

27:24

with that tone would not be UM.

27:27

The last thing that kind of makes people

27:29

question how authentic this recording

27:32

from the Seattle Sunday Star is is

27:35

that Smith said on his deathbed that the account

27:37

was true and accurate, which

27:39

seems a little strange to people

27:42

that that would be

27:44

what you spend your death, your dying breath uh,

27:47

reiterating that thing that I wrote in Seattle's

27:50

and the Sunday Star was really a thing that happened,

27:52

Yes, especially since there's really no

27:55

corroborating evidence for it.

27:58

It's an, as you

28:00

said, it's an odd last words

28:02

scenario. Yes, that the

28:04

general consensus, I mean, there's

28:06

there's a surprising maybe not surprising,

28:09

there's a there's a fair amount of debate about

28:11

lots of aspects of this speech, and that

28:13

the general consensus is probably there

28:16

was an address of some sort,

28:19

probably that happened when Chief Seattle

28:21

was introduced to Governor Stevens. But

28:24

that probably what we have today is a record

28:26

of it is not a hundred

28:28

percent what actually was said. It just it's

28:30

not quite feasible for

28:33

something to be reconstructed from notes

28:35

thirty years after the fact to be a pent

28:37

accurate to what had happened at the time. Well,

28:40

and it's also important to take into account that

28:43

we were still early on in

28:45

our relationship, you

28:48

know, in terms of Native Americans and the

28:50

settlers and pioneers coming in. That

28:52

relationship was still very early. It was

28:55

so the linguistic development

28:57

between them, like learning each other's which

29:00

is was probably you know,

29:02

still in its infancy in many ways, so there were

29:04

probably lots of nuances of language that were

29:06

not clear to each side. So in

29:08

terms of interpretation, there's

29:12

some great area. Right.

29:15

It continues to be an important address.

29:18

I think it's importance. Some of it has

29:20

to do with this whole back story of understanding

29:22

better, uh, the context

29:24

in which it may have happened, and the relationships

29:27

among the people involved, and a lot of that leads

29:29

into the legacy of Chief

29:31

Seattle and of this speech. Um.

29:34

He had a pretty welcoming attitude

29:37

toward settlers for his

29:39

entire life really and especially his

29:41

time as chief, and this didn't really

29:43

make him popular with all of the rest of the Native

29:46

American population, especially

29:48

when he signed the Point Elliott Treaty in eighteen

29:50

fifty five. That treaty relinquished

29:53

all of the tribal claims to most of the

29:55

land in the area. What

29:57

was supposed to happen was that the tribes would

29:59

get acts us to hunting and fishing

30:01

grounds, healthcare, education,

30:04

and a reservation in exchange for doing

30:06

all of that. Uh. That

30:08

is, as we all know, not really

30:10

what happened. And it took three

30:13

years for the

30:15

treaty to be ratified, and by the time

30:17

it was ratified, it was very different from

30:19

what people had originally agreed to you, So there was

30:21

a whole lot of unrest

30:25

among the Native American people. Um

30:28

It's it's pretty telling. When you look at historical

30:30

accounts, a lot of the most

30:33

mainstream ones talk about

30:35

how Seattle was always a friend to the

30:37

settlers and he signed this

30:39

this treaty out of friendship. When you look

30:41

at tribal records, the tone is more that he

30:43

was afraid of a military conflict that

30:46

he knew there was no way to win. So

30:48

it's something that you can definitely look at from

30:51

multiple angles thinking about the relationships

30:53

between these two people, which from this point

30:56

was definitely not as positive as it had

30:58

been in the very earliest days of the founding

31:01

of Seattle. Well and the Native

31:03

Americans did accused Seattle

31:05

of uh duplicity,

31:07

and it really led to a lot of ongoing

31:10

problems, especially

31:12

because of how the treaty actually played out once it

31:14

was in effect. There were wars

31:17

between the native tribes and the settlers in

31:19

the mid eighteen fifties. All through

31:22

those lots of things, lots of areas

31:24

of the Pacific northwest, where they were wars

31:27

between the Native Americans and the settlers,

31:29

and Seattle continued to remain an ally

31:32

and tried to keep his tribes out

31:34

of the battle um at.

31:37

In some points he would warn the American

31:39

settlers of incoming attacks by other

31:41

tribes. So he continued

31:43

to stand by the

31:46

white settlers, even as a

31:48

lot of the other native tribes nearby,

31:51

and the ones that were maybe not part

31:53

of his his particular collection

31:56

of tribes, really fought

31:58

back against the settlers. Years and

32:01

after the town of Seattle was incorporated

32:03

in eighteen sixty five, ordnance actually

32:06

forbade permanent Indian houses within

32:08

the city limits, right, so he had

32:10

to give up his home, yeah,

32:12

which he had not. They had already,

32:14

you know, already figuratively there had

32:16

been of giving up of the homeland. And then he

32:18

literally had to move out

32:20

of the city. He moved to the Port

32:23

Madison Sequamash Reservation, and

32:25

he died there after a brief illness in

32:27

June of eighteen sixty six, at about

32:30

the age of eighty. Since we're not completely sure

32:32

exactly when he was born, that's an estimate.

32:35

We know that his funeral involved both

32:37

Catholic and Native rights, but there

32:39

wasn't a record of it in the newspapers

32:41

at the time, not really involved

32:44

in any of the records of the local white settlers.

32:47

Uh to our knowledge, no leaders

32:50

who had known him and who had helped found

32:53

the city with his assistants attended

32:55

his funeral, so by that

32:57

point, by the point of his death, he was not well

32:59

known in the area anymore, at least

33:01

among the settlers. The Seattle

33:03

Weekly Intelligent Intelligencer

33:06

printed an article about his funeral in eighteen

33:08

seventy, so it was some years

33:10

after it happened, and then the Seattle

33:13

Sunday Star with his speech came out

33:15

in eighteen eighty seven. He started

33:17

to become a folk hero at that point,

33:19

and the Ted Perry speech from the seventies

33:21

made him into more of a household name, and

33:25

some history minded people put up a

33:27

marker in eighteen ninety that read

33:29

Seattle Chief of the sus Quamps

33:31

and Allied tribes died June seventh,

33:33

eighteen sixty six, from friend of

33:35

the Whites, and for him, the city of Seattle

33:37

was named by its founders. The

33:40

reverse side reads baptismal name Noah's

33:42

self age probably eighty years

33:46

so there is a marker, but

33:48

it didn't go up for I

33:50

didn't go up until some people decided that there

33:52

should be one. It was sort of marked with a rough year.

33:55

Twenty four years later. It

33:57

was roughly marked before that point. The

34:00

Squamas tribe opened a museum in Seattle

34:03

in September, which

34:05

is about the tribe's history and culture. Chief

34:08

Seattle does play a small part in the overall

34:10

museum, but he's not the center

34:12

focus of it. The Seattle

34:14

Times quotes the museum director as

34:16

saying, I think the tribe is consciously

34:19

trying to move away from Chief

34:21

Seattle being the beginning, middle,

34:23

and end of the tribe. It's in no way a

34:26

reflection of less esteem or

34:28

less respect. It was

34:30

not there yet the last time I was in Seattle. Nope,

34:33

now I want to go either. It's quite recent. Uh

34:37

so, yeah, I want to go to Uh

34:40

it's it's so interesting to see how

34:44

history treats him, right, you

34:46

know, in terms of him

34:48

having it once been. I mean, I know, for

34:51

me growing up in the seventies in

34:53

just outside of Seattle, there was lots

34:56

of Chief Seattle talks. So it's very

34:58

interesting now to know that

35:00

in the museum at least his role

35:03

is played down a little bit right well, and I

35:05

can imagine it being since the city

35:07

was named after him growing

35:09

up in the area, growing up in the Pacific Northwest,

35:12

I think that people's exposure to Chief

35:14

Seattle and who he was and what

35:16

his legacy was, and what the Native

35:19

Americans in the area are like is probably

35:22

vastly different from much

35:24

of the rest of the United States. I would

35:26

imagine, yes, having not grown up in the

35:28

rest of the United States to compare. I love

35:33

Seattle. I think it's an awesome, beautiful

35:35

part of the world, and

35:38

I'm glad that we have the records

35:41

that we do have of what the settlement

35:43

there was like. It is as

35:45

many parts of American history are. When

35:48

it comes to the relationship between settlers

35:50

and Native Americans, is very distressing,

35:53

especially when you consider

35:55

that after the time period that we've talked about,

35:57

there were some pretty orchestrated efforts by the Romant

36:00

to try to basically breed out in

36:02

quotes, Native Americans.

36:04

That was like sending Native American

36:06

children to boarding schools so that they wouldn't

36:08

be exposed to their native culture, uh,

36:11

that type of thing. So the fact that the Squamis

36:13

tribe has been able to survive

36:16

in the face of all that is is noted as

36:18

an achievement. Uh that there

36:20

are still nine and fifty members after

36:23

all of that. Indeed,

36:26

I feel like we're ending on a sad note. I know,

36:28

I'm trying to think of a way to make it happy. But

36:31

there's a new museum. There is a new museum,

36:34

and the pictures of it look beautiful, Yeah,

36:36

gorgeous. They look really beautiful and like a

36:38

really wonderful place to go and learn more

36:40

about cultural history of that part. Any

36:43

time you travel in the Pacific Northwest, the Native

36:45

American influence is so visible

36:47

in a lot of places, and so being

36:50

able to see where that all comes from instead

36:52

of it just being sort of the facade stuck on the building,

36:55

I think is a wonderful thing

36:57

to be able to do. Yes, maybe we should

36:59

have a pilgrimage. Let's do that history

37:02

field trip. We can visit my brother. I

37:05

also have a brother and a sister there,

37:09

and I believe you also have a listener, Mail, I certainly

37:11

do. And this one amuses me a little bit because

37:13

it is a correction to a correction that we previously

37:15

read and listener mail. We had previously

37:18

read a correction about

37:20

whether you could describe the

37:23

pope as having resigned, and

37:25

so this one comes from Jacqueline and she says,

37:27

high ladies, just listen to your last podcast.

37:29

And I wanted to clarify a piece of mail

37:32

that said the word resigned should not be used

37:34

in regard to Pope Benedict. As a former

37:37

reporter for a Catholic newspaper, I pulled

37:39

out my Catholic a p style guide. Yes,

37:42

we had to use two style guides when

37:44

writing stories. And the word retirement

37:46

can be used for a pope, priest, cardinal,

37:49

or bishop. Here's what it says retirement.

37:52

When referring to a priest, bishop, cardinal, etcetera.

37:54

It can be said that he retired from active

37:56

ministry or, in the case of a priest, attained

37:59

see near priest's status. This is

38:01

to clarify the point that the priest does not retire

38:04

from the priesthood. He remains a priest,

38:06

though has retired from full time assignments.

38:09

So the word retirement or resigned can be

38:11

used as it's how it's used

38:13

that matters to the Catholic Church. Hope this

38:15

clears things up for everyone. So while

38:18

that entry does not specifically say pope, we

38:20

did go look this up ourselves after

38:22

we recorded our previous one where we talked about

38:24

that correction, Yeah, because we realized in

38:26

talking about it that we had

38:29

seen it on many other news sites listed as

38:31

resigned. Sort

38:33

of said what is the rest? Looking up and

38:35

the ap did specifically use the word

38:38

retired, um, as did it.

38:40

Turns out the Vatican official

38:42

things from the Vatican website used

38:44

the word retired when Pope

38:46

Benedict delivered his address. It

38:49

was translated to the word renounced,

38:52

so that word can be used. Um. But

38:54

then also there were official things from the Vatican that

38:56

used the word resigned. So it appears

38:59

that resigned is okay as a word

39:01

to use about talking about a pope stepping

39:04

down. It happens so infrequently and certainly

39:06

in the modern era, that we don't

39:08

really have a clear

39:11

established rule. You don't really have at the topic

39:13

that used to Yeah, we don't what to

39:15

call a pope's no longer being in the pope. So

39:18

yes, if you would like to comment further

39:21

about when we can and can't use the

39:23

word resign or this podcast

39:25

or anything else, you may write to us a history

39:27

podcast at Discovery dot com.

39:29

We're also on Twitter at mist in History and

39:32

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39:34

history Class stuff. If you would

39:36

like to learn more about what we talked about

39:38

today and what the city of Seattle

39:40

has turned into, you can go to our website

39:42

and put the word Seattle in the search bar and

39:44

you will find the Ultimate City of Seattle

39:47

quiz. You can do that and a whole lot more

39:49

at our website, which is how Stuff Works dot

39:51

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39:53

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39:55

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40:20

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