Chief Seattle

“Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever fled the approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before the morning sun.”

“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.”

“If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?”

“All things share the same breath - the beast, the tree, the man... the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.”

“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Humans merely share the earth. We can only protect the land, not own it.”

“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.”

“Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless.”

“When the last red man shall have perished from the earth and his memory among the white men shall have become a myth, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless.”

“There is no death, only a change of worlds.”

“Take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints!”

“The Earth does not belong to us: we belong to the Earth.”

“What is man without the beasts? For if all the beast were gone, man would die of a great loneliness of the spirit.”

“The white man will never be alone. Let him be just, and deal kindly with my people. For the dead are not powerless.”

“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.”

“My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain.”

“To us, the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground.”