Chief Seattle Speech Summary

In this text, Chief Seattle ponders whether or not to sell his land to the president of the United States, George Washington. Chief Seattle is trying to appeal both to his tribal members and to the white settlers offering to buy the tribal land. Seattle’s speech is a mix of placatory language and of bitter remarks about the differences between whites and natives. Chief Seattle uses logos to convince both sides of the validity of his claims, he uses pathos to garner support from his own people Chief Seattle employs logical arguments quite strikingly throughout his speech.

Within the two passages, two Native American writers, N.S. Momaday and D. Brown, deliver two contrasting views on the Native American landscape and experience. Momaday’s awestruck diction and peaceful imagery revel in the seclusion of a scenario which promotes creation. On the other hand, Brown’s forlorn diction and passive tone mourn the lifeless landscape and loss of people forcibly detached from their land. While Momaday writes to explain the admirable beauty of Rainy Mountain, Brown writes to mourn the loss of life stripped in the barren landscape.

Additionally, Royal gives clarification for Native Americans’ positive stereotypes. He explains, “ But this is far from modern concepts of ecology. Native Americans in fact overhunted deer and beaver even before the arrival of the white man, and did not seriously try to preserve the resources in the vicinity of their villages. As a result, the typical woodland village, having exhausted local soil and game, had to move on average every eight to 10 years” (Royal 47). Although the Native Americans did not destroy the environment like Europeans on such a large scale, they are not trying to protect the environment either. This opposes the stereotypes that Native Americans are model ecologists. Royal also examines the inhumane sides of Native American tribes. Royal reveals, “The

Tecumseh was a Shawnee Indian chief who had been born around 1768 near Springfield, Ohio. During the early 1800s, he started to oppose the United States, and attempted to create a confederation of Indian Tribes to rebel against the United States. One of the main reasons Tecumseh opposed the United States was the fact that white people were squatting on Native American land, and was forcing his people out. Although Tecumseh opposed whites, he knew how to speak their language. Tecumseh was described as a six-foot tall man with “fine” features. He had been rumored to be fluent in English, and most surprisingly, also in French. He also managed to turn his brother’s religious teachings into political movements in order to get his fellow Native Americans to support his movement. [Collins, pg 36-40]

The arrival of the ‘foreigners’, as referred to by the Native Americans, turned a new stone in Native American diplomacy. No longer did they have to only deal with neighboring tribes, as they were forced to endeavor into politics with strangers who were looking to take their land. The first relationship between the pilgrims and the Native Americans began with the Wampanoag tribe. The relations between the two groups paved the view that the pilgrims had towards the Indians. The decently friendly relationship that stood between the two groups was short lived as the pilgrims felt that the indians were getting in the way of their expansion; and shortly after the friendship ceased to exist (Bell, 37).

During the end of the nineteenth century, the United States had formed policies which reduced land allotted to Native Americans. By enforcing these laws as well as Anglo-American ideals, the United States compromised indigenous people’s culture and ability to thrive in its society.

The Spanish are difficult to persuade because they believe in the Manifest Destiny. Yet by using both of these devices he evoked pity by describing the indians being left with nothing, but also fear by threatening to continue the violent raids. Chief Tecumseh hopes to show that if the Spanish continue to take away the land of the natives, they will come together and the strength of the red men will overcome the strength of the white men. While Chief Tecumseh’s speech uses pathos and causal relationship, Chief Seattle’s excerpt, “Letter to President Pierce” uses connotations as well as pathos to bring awareness to President Pierce. He brings awareness by pointing out the flaws of the spanish settlers. He addresses the white men by stating, “Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste” (P.5 L.1-2). Not only does he emphasize the loss of native americans through his excerpt, but also brings attention to the loss of the Spanish if they continue to act

Vance (1995) stated, “For nearly 500 years there has been a very oppressive, dishonest and manipulative message being voiced by the dominant white Angelo culture towards Native Americans, This has caused a great distrust, anger and conflicting attitudes for the Native American community” (p.1).

“We must protect the forests for our children, grandchildren and children yet to be born. We must protect the forests for those who can't speak for themselves such as the birds, animals, fish and trees" Chief Qwatsina’s of the Lakota Tribe. The plain natives, a respectful people, took from the land what they needed and always gave back. The settlers that came thought they were smarter and more advanced than the natives, and viewed the natives as being inferior. In reality it was the exact opposite. It was the settlers that had forgotten that the most basic way of life was the smartest way of life. The settlers were clouded by their “vast knowledge” that they convinced themselves that their way of life was the best and only way of life and

American colonists and the Native Americans of North America have had challenges getting along with each other ever since they encountered early in the 17th century. During the American Revolutionary war they were allies but once the white settlers gained freedom, they started to seek more land, which happened to be the land Native Americans occupied. After a long ferocious thirty year war, President Andrew Jackson issued The first annual address to congress, this article fulfills Monroe’s Motivated Sequence, contains bias and assertion which marginalize and silence the voice of Native Americans.

Similar to African Americans and women in 1800’s (and arguably now), these Amerindians were minorities that arguably possessed no value nor contribution the cultivation of the United States. Ideas initially encouraged by Christopher Columbus, where he refers to Native Americans as ignorant savage beasts, has been preserved and acknowledged by the Americans where the belief of inferiority resonates with their perspective of the Native Americans. Immoral as this notion sounds, the Americans would then enfranchise to urbanization, industrialization, and acquisition of abundant resources without pondering on the consequences it has on the Native Americans. In 1830, in order to proceed in territorial aggrandizement, newly-inaugurated President Jackson scribed a congressional message promoting the removal of Indians for the vain benefit of the United States. In the intermediary of his message, he states a rhetorical question: What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12 million happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion? (Jackson 1) The inclusion of this rhetorical question is to exclude the care for Native Americans as they are perceived as “savages”, and place more stress on the significant

In a New York Times article “Why Dakota Is The New Keystone,” written by Bill McKibben he uses word choice that envelops a certain tone to the reader, varying sentence structure that make the piece interesting, and appeals to both pathos and logos. All of these writing skills are used to encourage Americans to stand up with the Sioux tribe. McKibben uses a strong choice of words that portray the Sioux tribe as the “heroes of the standing rock reservation, sometimes on horseback, have peacefully stood up to police dogs, pepper spray and the bizarre-looking militarized tanks and SWAT teams that are the stuff of modern policing” (McKibben). When the reader sees the words such as ‘heroes’ and ‘peacefully’ it is easy for them to see that the tribe is not the enemy in this situation.

“My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain...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.,” Chief Seattle Speech of 1854. The culture of the Native American people has been deteriorating ever since the Europeans arrived in the Americas. The impactful and immense loss of lifestyle that they faced is one that can never be recovered, what the United States has given them are generations of trauma and blatant suffering. However, the U.S. did not stop there, a multitude of cultures have been broken to help keep America pure. For instance, one of the most significant cultures that have been dismantled by the U.S. other than the Natives and their music were the languages and music of the African slaves. The apparent likeness of these two cultures in the ways in which their deconstruction impacted them is in more of an abundance, such as the dominating influence of the Christian religion and the gravely vital role of maintaining what little heritage they could through language. In contrast to this, the two groups had an opposing difference pertaining to how the Natives and slaves tried to compensate the immense loss of their culture through the generations.

This can be seen when the Ponca Tribe received word that “the President told [them] to pack up—that [they] must move to the Indian Territory.” In the interest of the President, someone who did not govern over them, he was forcing the Indians to move out of their home. They were given land that was not suitable for anyone to live on and weren’t even paid for the land that was taken away from them. After some time, these Indians would come to find out that everything they’ve been lied to and that “The President said he knew nothing about it.” Even though they lost their homes, it was only the commencement of the hardships and adversities that were to surface soon. For instance, Americans forced the Ponca tribe from their land in Nebraska and made them take the long trek to their new home in Oklahoma all on foot. The travel alone, nearly eradicated the Ponca tribe and as said by Chief Standing Bear that, “Many died on the road. Two of my children died. After we reached the new land, all my horses died. The water was very bad. All our cattle died; not one was left.” The Ponca Indians were deceived to more than once and mistreated due to the fact that they were not considered people under the law of the United States and that America's expansion was more important than their rights as human

The essay “Letter to President Pierce” written by Chief Seattle in 1855 lays out some of the biggest differences between white American culture and the culture of Native Americans. The essay is very brief in length but it does address many points that can be take farther. Chief Seattle begins the essay with simple stating the obvious; that everyone already knows white men and natives do not understand each other’s ways of living. He continues this by saying that even though the land that each of them hold is the same the way that it is handled could make you think otherwise. Chief Seattle believes that white man tires to fight and pillage everything rather work with it. This is the start of one of the biggest differences between the two cultures. By acting this way Seattle thinks that white man has no real connection to his culture because he continuously moves on from place to place leaving behind anything that was built by his ancestors. However, he contradicts himself by saying that maybe his thoughts are wrong because he is only a savage. The next main point that Seattle addresses is how he compares the silence of nature rather than all of the manmade noise of cities. He questions his stance on the noise pollution made by cities and asks if the only reason he does not like it is because he has not learned the “civilization” of it. Seattle believes in working with nature and what the world has given us, so that humans will last. He makes a strong point that if something