What is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around the pool at night?
How can your God become our God and renew our prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness?
What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit.
The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father.
To us, the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground.
There is no such place as away.
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.
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 change of worlds.
Every part of the earth is sacred to my people.
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.
All things are bound together. All things connect.
The earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.
Your religion was written on tablets of stone, ours on our hearts. 8. We are part of the earth and the earth is part of us.
We do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us?
Contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.
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.
Man belongs to the Earth, Earth does not belong to man.
My words are like the stars that never change.
How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every part of the earth is sacred to my people.
The whites, too, shall pass – perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your own bed, and you might suffocate in your own waste.
Tribe follows tribe, nations follow nations like the tides of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless.