Chief Seattle

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Chief Seattle bigraphy, stories - Duwamish chief

Chief Seattle : biography

c. 1780 – 1866

Chief Seattle (an Anglicization of the modern Duwamish conventional spelling Si’ahl, equivalent to the modern Lushootseed publishing spelling Siʔaɫ, , originally ;Chief Seattle, Section: , 2003-2007, HistoryLink.org Essay 5071. Accessed 2010-04-21. This article includes a sound file of the late Skagit Elder Vi Hilbert demonstrating the correct pronunciation of Si’ahl’s name. For the speech controversy emanating from Smith, see the article section entitled "Known for a City and a Speech." c. 1780 – June 7, 1866) was a Dkhw’Duw’Absh (Duwamish) chief, also known as Sealth, Seathle, Seathl, or See-ahth. A prominent figure among his people, he pursued a path of accommodation to white settlers, forming a personal relationship with David Swinson "Doc" Maynard. The city of Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington, was named after him. A widely publicized speech arguing in favor of ecological responsibility and respect of native Americans’ land rights has been attributed to him.

The Speech controversy

There is a controversy about a speech by Si’ahl concerning the concession of native lands to the settlers.

Even the date and location of the speech has been disputed, but the most common version is that on March 11, 1854, Si’ahl gave a speech at a large outdoor gathering in Seattle. The meeting had been called by Governor Isaac Ingalls Stevens to discuss the surrender or sale of native land to white settlers. Doc Maynard introduced Stevens, who then briefly explained his mission, which was already well understood by all present.

Si’ahl 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. No one alive today knows what he said; he spoke in the Lushootseed language, and someone translated his words into Chinook jargon, a limited trading language, and a third person translated that into English.William S. Abruzzi (1999), The real Chief Seattle was not a spiritual ecologist, Skeptical Inquirer 23(2):44-48

Some years later, Dr. Henry A. Smith wrote down an English version of the , based on Smith’s notes. It was a flowery text in which Si’ahl purportedly thanked the white people for their generosity, demanded that any treaty guarantee access to Native burial grounds, and made a contrast between the God of the white people and that of his own. Smith noted that he had recorded "…but a fragment of his [Sealth’s] speech". Recent scholarship questions the authenticity of Smith’s supposed translation.BOLA Architecture + Planning & Northwest Archaeological Associates, Inc., , Port of Seattle, April 5, 2005. Accessed online 25 July 2008. p.

In 1891, Frederick James Grant’s History of Seattle, Washington reprinted Smith’s version. In 1929, Clarence B. Bagley’s History of King County, Washington reprinted Grant’s version with some additions. In 1931, John M. Rich reprinted the Bagley version in Chief Seattle’s Unanswered Challenge. In the 1960s, articles by William Arrowsmith and the growth of environmentalism revived interest in Si’ahl’s speech. Ted Perry introduced anachronistic material, such as shooting buffalo from trains, into a new version for a movie called Home, produced for the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission. The movie sank without a trace, but this newest and most fictional version is the most widely known. Albert Furtwangler analyzes the evolution of Si’ahl’s speech in Answering Chief Seattle (1997).

The speech attributed to Si’ahl, as re-written by others, has been widely cited as "powerful, bittersweet plea for respect of Native American rights and environmental values". A similar controversy surrounds a purported 1855 letter from Si’ahl to President Franklin Pierce, which has never been located and, based on internal evidence, is described by historian Jerry L. Clark as "an unhistorical artifact of someone’s fertile literary imagination".