Chief Sealth and The Speech

There is a Pacific Northwest name that has achieved world-wide attention, deriving from the legend and alleged words of Chief Sealth.

The “Sealth phenomenon” has been discussed during meetings of the Pacific Northwest Historians Guild and at other forums. An abridged version of the old chief’s January 1855 speech to Governor Isaac I. Stevens and others at the signing of the Point Elliott Treaty has become a favorite throughout the world.

Germans have been especially captivated by Sealth’s comments, and their Green Party once adapted his words as a sort of battle cry. Several years ago, while on a Georgia sea island I spotted a tee-shirt on a busboy working my table which boasted Chief Sealth’s words across the front.

Perhaps the most popular paragraph of the Chief’s famous speech is the following: “And when the last red man shall have perished from the earth and his memory among the white man shall have perished from the earth and his memory among the white man shall have become a myth, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe; and when your children’s children shall think themselves alone . . . they will not be alone . . . the streets of your cities and villages . . . will throng with the returning hosts . . . let (the white man) be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless.”

https://www.postalley.org/2024/05/22/chief-sealth-and-the-speech/