Chief Seattle

This reading was moving—moving in that it made me a little sad. The tone is melancholy, so like I said in my previous post, that really paints a picture for me. I liked this piece. I liked it because of the imagery that Chief Seattle uses to describe the people in his tribe, and ‘The Great Spirit.’ I agree with the Chief because the European people did just move in and take over their land and no matter what they said, the settlers still segregated the ‘red brothers’ from the white ones. Can you imagine what your life would be like if you were established in your ways and had values and traditions, and invaders come into it and ripped your world to shreds? That is what the Europeans did to the Native Americans. When I visited Seattle this summer, I took a tour of the Space Needle, and, I was told the story of how the city was named. Chief Seattle’s name was actually something else, and the Europeans wanted to make peace with his tribe once he passed away, so they were going to name an island after him. His tribe then told the Europeans that it was disrespectful to mention his name after death because it prevented his spirit from resting in peace; the name Seattle was given because Sea- was the prefix of his original name, and the –ttle, well, they didn’t really tell us why that was the suffix. Reading this however makes me not really appreciate that story as much as I did when I heard it. I thought it was great that they did that; now that I have read his actual words and feelings, I am sort of asking myself, “Did that really make the settlers feel like they redeemed themselves?” I can’t help but feeling a little irritable after reading the pain in his words. At the beginning, the introduction asks if any white man can read Chief Seattle’s speech without shame—I sure can not.