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Yonder sky that has wept tears of passion
Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion
on our fathers for centuries untold,
and which to us, looks eternal, may change.
Today it is fair,
tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds.
My words are like stars that never set.
What Seattle says,
the great chief, Washington can rely upon,
with as much certainty as our pale-face brothers
can rely upon the return of the seasons.
The son of the white chief says
his father sends us greeting of friendship
and good will.
This is kind, for we know
he has little need of our friendship in return,
because his people are many.
They are like the grass that covers the vast prairies,
while my people are few, and
resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain.
The great, and I presume also good,
white chief sends us word that he wants to buy our land
but is willing to allow us
to reserve enough to live on comfortably.
This indeed appears generous,
For the red man no longer has rights that he needs respect,
and the offer may be wise, also,
for we are no longer in need of a great country.
THERE WAS A TIME
when our people covered the whole land,
as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea
cover its shell-paved floor.
ut that time has long since passed away
with the greatness of tribes now almost forgotten.
I will not mourn over our untimely decay,
nor reproach my pale-face brothers for hastening it,
for we, too, may have been somewhat to blame.
When our young men grow angry
at some real or imaginary wrong,
and disfigure their faces with black paint,
their heart, also, are disfigured and turn black,
and then their cruelty is relentless
and knows no bounds,
and our old men are not able to restrain them.
But let us hope that hostilities
between the red-man and his pale-face brothers
may never return.
We would have everything to lose
and nothing to gain.
True it is, that revenge,
with our young braves,
is considered gain,
even at the cost of their own lives,
but old men who stay at home in times of war,
and old women, who have sons to lose,
know better.
Our great father Washington,
for I presume he is now our father as well as yours,
since George has moved his boundaries to the north;
our great and good father, I say,
sends us word by his son,
who, no doubt, is a great chief among his people,
that if we do as he desires, he will protect us.
His brave armies will be to us
a bristling wall of strength,
and his great ships of war will fill our harbors
so that our ancient enemies far to the northward,
the Simsiams and Hydas
will no longer frighten our women and old men.
Then he will be our father
and we will be his children.
BUT CAN THIS EVER BE?
Your God loves your people and hates mine;
he folds his strong arms lovingly
around the white man
and leads him as a father leads his infant son,
but he has forsaken his red children;
he makes your people wax strong every day,
and soon they will fill the land;
while my people
are ebbing away like a fast-receding tide,
that will never flow again.
The white man’s God cannot love his red children
or he would protect them.
They seem to be orphans
and can look nowhere for help.
How can we become brothers?
How can your father become our father
and bring us prosperity
and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness?
Your God seems to us to be partial.
He came to the white man.
We never saw Him.
We never even heard His voice:
He gave the white man laws
but he had no word for His red children
whose teeming millions filled this vast continent
as the stars fill the firmament.
No, we are two distinct races
and must ever remain so.
There is little in common between us.
The ashes of our ancestors are sacred
and their final resting place is hallowed ground,
while you wander away from the tombs
of your fathers seemingly without regret.
Your religion was written on tables of stone
by the iron finger of an angry God,
lest you might forget it.
The red-man could never remember
nor comprehend it.
Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors,
the dreams of our old men,
given them 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 homes of their nativity
as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb.
They wander far off beyond the stars,
are soon forgotten,
and never return.
Our dead never forget the beautiful world
that gave them being.
They still love its winding rivers,
its great mountains and its sequestered vales,
and they ever yearn in tenderest affection
over the lonely hearted living
and often return to visit and comfort them.
Day and night cannot dwell together.
The red man has ever fled
the approach of the white man,
as the changing mists on the mountain side
flee before the blazing morning sun.
However, your proposition seems a just one,
and I think my folks will accept it
and will retire to the reservation you offer them,
and we will dwell apart and in peace,
for the words of the great white chief seem to be
the voice of nature
speaking to my people out of the think darkness
that is fast gathering around them
like a dense fog floating inward from a midnight sea.
It matters but little
where we pass the remainder of our days.
THEY ARE NOT MANY.
The Indian’s night promises to be dark.
No bright star hovers about the horizon.
Sad-voiced wind moan in the distance.
Some grim Nemsis of our race
is on the red man’s trail,
and where ever he goes he will still hear
the sure approaching footsteps of the fell destroyer
and prepare 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 all the mighty hosts
that once filled this broad land
or that now roam in fragmentary bands
through these vast solitudes
will remain to weep over the tombs of a people
once as powerful and as hopeful as your own.
But why should we repine?
Why should I murmur at the fate of my people?
Tribes are made up of individuals
and are no better than they.
Men come and go like the waves of the sea.
A tear, a tamanawus, a dirge, and they are gone
from our longing eyes forever.
Even the white man,
whose God walked and talked with him,
as friend to friend,
is not exempt from the common destiny.
We may be brothers after all.
We shall see.
We will ponder your proposition,
and when we decided we will tell you.
But should we accept it,
I here and now make this first condition:
That we will not be denied the privilege,
without molestation,
of visiting at will
the graves of our ancestors and friends.
Every part of this country is sacred to my people.
Every hill-side, every valley,
every plain and grove
has been hallowed
by some fond memory
or sad experience of my tribe.
EVEN THE ROCKS
that seems to lie dumb
as they swelter in the sun along the silent seashore
in solemn grandeur
thrill with memories of past events
connected with the fate of my people,
and the very dust under your feet
responds more lovingly to our footsteps than to yours,
because it is the ashes of our ancestors,
and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch,
for the soil is rich with the life of our kindred.
The sable braves, and fond mothers,
and glad-hearted maidens,
and the little children who lived and rejoiced here,
and whose very names are now forgotten,
still love these solitudes,
and their deep fastnesses at eventide
grow shadowy with the presence of dusky spirits.
And when the last red man
shall have perished from the earth
and his memory among white man
shall have become a myth,
these shores shall swarm
with the invisible dead of my tribe,
and when your children’s children
shall think themselves alone
in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway
or un the silence of the woods,
they will not be alone.
In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude.
At night, when the street of your cities and villages
shall be silent, and you think them deserted,
they will throng with the returning hosts
that once filled 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 altogether powerless.
Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion
on our fathers for centuries untold,
and which to us, looks eternal, may change.
Today it is fair,
tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds.
My words are like stars that never set.
What Seattle says,
the great chief, Washington can rely upon,
with as much certainty as our pale-face brothers
can rely upon the return of the seasons.
The son of the white chief says
his father sends us greeting of friendship
and good will.
This is kind, for we know
he has little need of our friendship in return,
because his people are many.
They are like the grass that covers the vast prairies,
while my people are few, and
resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain.
The great, and I presume also good,
white chief sends us word that he wants to buy our land
but is willing to allow us
to reserve enough to live on comfortably.
This indeed appears generous,
For the red man no longer has rights that he needs respect,
and the offer may be wise, also,
for we are no longer in need of a great country.
THERE WAS A TIME
when our people covered the whole land,
as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea
cover its shell-paved floor.
ut that time has long since passed away
with the greatness of tribes now almost forgotten.
I will not mourn over our untimely decay,
nor reproach my pale-face brothers for hastening it,
for we, too, may have been somewhat to blame.
When our young men grow angry
at some real or imaginary wrong,
and disfigure their faces with black paint,
their heart, also, are disfigured and turn black,
and then their cruelty is relentless
and knows no bounds,
and our old men are not able to restrain them.
But let us hope that hostilities
between the red-man and his pale-face brothers
may never return.
We would have everything to lose
and nothing to gain.
True it is, that revenge,
with our young braves,
is considered gain,
even at the cost of their own lives,
but old men who stay at home in times of war,
and old women, who have sons to lose,
know better.
Our great father Washington,
for I presume he is now our father as well as yours,
since George has moved his boundaries to the north;
our great and good father, I say,
sends us word by his son,
who, no doubt, is a great chief among his people,
that if we do as he desires, he will protect us.
His brave armies will be to us
a bristling wall of strength,
and his great ships of war will fill our harbors
so that our ancient enemies far to the northward,
the Simsiams and Hydas
will no longer frighten our women and old men.
Then he will be our father
and we will be his children.
BUT CAN THIS EVER BE?
Your God loves your people and hates mine;
he folds his strong arms lovingly
around the white man
and leads him as a father leads his infant son,
but he has forsaken his red children;
he makes your people wax strong every day,
and soon they will fill the land;
while my people
are ebbing away like a fast-receding tide,
that will never flow again.
The white man’s God cannot love his red children
or he would protect them.
They seem to be orphans
and can look nowhere for help.
How can we become brothers?
How can your father become our father
and bring us prosperity
and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness?
Your God seems to us to be partial.
He came to the white man.
We never saw Him.
We never even heard His voice:
He gave the white man laws
but he had no word for His red children
whose teeming millions filled this vast continent
as the stars fill the firmament.
No, we are two distinct races
and must ever remain so.
There is little in common between us.
The ashes of our ancestors are sacred
and their final resting place is hallowed ground,
while you wander away from the tombs
of your fathers seemingly without regret.
Your religion was written on tables of stone
by the iron finger of an angry God,
lest you might forget it.
The red-man could never remember
nor comprehend it.
Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors,
the dreams of our old men,
given them 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 homes of their nativity
as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb.
They wander far off beyond the stars,
are soon forgotten,
and never return.
Our dead never forget the beautiful world
that gave them being.
They still love its winding rivers,
its great mountains and its sequestered vales,
and they ever yearn in tenderest affection
over the lonely hearted living
and often return to visit and comfort them.
Day and night cannot dwell together.
The red man has ever fled
the approach of the white man,
as the changing mists on the mountain side
flee before the blazing morning sun.
However, your proposition seems a just one,
and I think my folks will accept it
and will retire to the reservation you offer them,
and we will dwell apart and in peace,
for the words of the great white chief seem to be
the voice of nature
speaking to my people out of the think darkness
that is fast gathering around them
like a dense fog floating inward from a midnight sea.
It matters but little
where we pass the remainder of our days.
THEY ARE NOT MANY.
The Indian’s night promises to be dark.
No bright star hovers about the horizon.
Sad-voiced wind moan in the distance.
Some grim Nemsis of our race
is on the red man’s trail,
and where ever he goes he will still hear
the sure approaching footsteps of the fell destroyer
and prepare 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 all the mighty hosts
that once filled this broad land
or that now roam in fragmentary bands
through these vast solitudes
will remain to weep over the tombs of a people
once as powerful and as hopeful as your own.
But why should we repine?
Why should I murmur at the fate of my people?
Tribes are made up of individuals
and are no better than they.
Men come and go like the waves of the sea.
A tear, a tamanawus, a dirge, and they are gone
from our longing eyes forever.
Even the white man,
whose God walked and talked with him,
as friend to friend,
is not exempt from the common destiny.
We may be brothers after all.
We shall see.
We will ponder your proposition,
and when we decided we will tell you.
But should we accept it,
I here and now make this first condition:
That we will not be denied the privilege,
without molestation,
of visiting at will
the graves of our ancestors and friends.
Every part of this country is sacred to my people.
Every hill-side, every valley,
every plain and grove
has been hallowed
by some fond memory
or sad experience of my tribe.
EVEN THE ROCKS
that seems to lie dumb
as they swelter in the sun along the silent seashore
in solemn grandeur
thrill with memories of past events
connected with the fate of my people,
and the very dust under your feet
responds more lovingly to our footsteps than to yours,
because it is the ashes of our ancestors,
and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch,
for the soil is rich with the life of our kindred.
The sable braves, and fond mothers,
and glad-hearted maidens,
and the little children who lived and rejoiced here,
and whose very names are now forgotten,
still love these solitudes,
and their deep fastnesses at eventide
grow shadowy with the presence of dusky spirits.
And when the last red man
shall have perished from the earth
and his memory among white man
shall have become a myth,
these shores shall swarm
with the invisible dead of my tribe,
and when your children’s children
shall think themselves alone
in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway
or un the silence of the woods,
they will not be alone.
In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude.
At night, when the street of your cities and villages
shall be silent, and you think them deserted,
they will throng with the returning hosts
that once filled 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 altogether powerless.
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