Chief Seattle's Speech in 1854 (Ver.1) - 生態環境討論

Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries
untold, and which to us appears changeless and eternal, may change. Today
is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like the
stars that never change. 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. The white chief says that Big Chief at Washington sends us
greetings of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him for we know he has
little need of our friendship in return. His people are many. They are like
the grass that covers vast prairies. My people are few. They resemble the
scattering trees of a storm-swept plain. The great, and I presume -- good,
White Chief sends us word that he wishes to buy our land but is willing to
allow us enough to live comfortably. This indeed appears just, even generous,
for the Red Man no longer has rights that he need respect, and the offer may
be wise, also, as we are no longer in need o an extensive country.

There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-
ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed
away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory. I will
not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface
brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame.

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. Thus it
was when the white man began to push our forefathers ever westward. But let
us hope that the hostilities between us may never return. We would have
everything to lose and nothing to gain. 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.

Our good father in Washington--for I presume he is now our father as well
as yours, since King George has moved his boundaries further north--our great
and good father, I say, sends us word that if we do as he desires he will
protect us. His brave warriors will be to us a bristling wall of strength,
and his wonderful ships of war will fill our harbors, so that our ancient
enemies far to the northward -- the Haidas and Tsimshians -- will cease to
frighten our women, children, and old men. Then in reality he will be our
father and we his children. But can that ever be? Your God is not our God!
Your God loves your people and hates mine! He folds his strong protecting arms
lovingly about the paleface and leads him by the hand as a father leads an
infant son. But, He has forsaken His Red children, if they really are His. Our
God, the Great Spirit, seems also to have forsaken us. Your God makes your
people wax stronger every day. Soon they will fill all the land. Our people
are ebbing away like a rapidly receding ide that will never return. The white
man's God cannot love our people or He would protect them. They seem to be
orphans who can look nowhere for help. How then can we be brothers? How can
your God become our God and renew our prosperity and awaken in us dreams of
returning greatness? If we have a common Heavenly Father He must be partial,
for He came to His paleface children. We never saw Him. He gave you laws but
had no word for His red children whose teeming multitudes once filled this vast
continent as stars fill the firmament. No; we are two distinct races with
separate origins and separate destinies. There is little in common between us.

To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is
hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors and seemingly
without regret. Your religion was written upon tablets of stone by the iron
finger of your God so that you could not forget. The Red Man could never
comprehend or remember it. 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.
Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they
pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They are soon
forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful world that
gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers,
its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays,
and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and
often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and
comfort them.

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. However,
your proposition seems fair and I think that my people will accept it and will
retire to the reservation you offer them. Then we will dwell apart in peace,
for the words of the Great White Chief seem to be the words of nature speaking
to my people out of dense darkness.

It matters little where we pass the remnant of our days. They will not be many
. The Indian's night promises to be dark. Not a single star of hope hovers
above his horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance. Grim fate seems to
be on the Red Man's trail, and wherever he will hear the approaching footsteps
of his fell destroyer and prepare stolidly 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 the descendants of the
mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in happy homes,
protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people
once more powerful and hopeful than yours. But why should I mourn at the
untimely fate of my people? Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation,
like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless.
Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White
Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend to friend, cannot be
exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see.

We will ponder your proposition and when we decide we will let you know. But
should we accept it, I here and now make this condition that we will not be
denied the privilege without molestation of visiting at any time the tombs of
our ancestors, friends, and children. Every part of this soil is sacred in the
estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove,
has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the
rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the
silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives
of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly
to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our
rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the
silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives
of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly
to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our
ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Our
departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy hearted maidens, and even the
little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love
these somber solitudes and t eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits.
And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe
shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the
invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves
alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence
of the pathless 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 are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the
returning hosts that once filled them 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
powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds.

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少吹冷氣 少吃肉 少騎車 節省用電
請保護大自然....
Love on Nature, mother of all.
生態保育網頁
http://www.ran.org/
http://www.savebiogems.org/

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