The leader of the Redskins Seattle, or Seattle, after whom the city in the United States is named, is a real historical figure. And despite the fact that the reliability of this version of his address to the US President in 1865 is questioned by Wikipedia, this text is very useful to modern people.
The Great Leader from Washington announces that he wants to buy our land. The Great Leader also sends us messages of friendship and goodwill.
He is very kind, for we know that our friendship is too little to pay for his affection. However, we will consider your proposal, for we understand that if we do not sell the land, the pale-faced man will come with guns and take it by force.
How can you buy the sky or the warmth of the earth? This idea is incomprehensible to us.
If we don't have control over the freshness of the air and the splashes of water, then how can you buy them from us?
For my people, every inch of this land is sacred. Every sparkling pine cone, every sandy shore, every patch of fog in a dark forest, every glade and every buzzing midge - they are all sacred to the memory and feelings of my people. The sap flowing in the trunks of the trees carries the memory of the Redskins.
Having entered the path among the stars, the departed pale-faced forget the country of their birth. Our departed never forget this beautiful land, for it is the mother of the Redskins. We are a part of this land, and it is a part of ourselves. Fragrant flowers are our sisters, a deer, a horse, a big eagle are our brothers. Mountain peaks, luscious meadows, the warm body of a mustang and man - they are all one family.
When the Great Leader from Washington says he wants to buy land from us, he is asking too much of us. The great leader announces that he will leave us a place to live in comfort. He will become our father, and we will become his children. But everything is not so simple, because for us this land is sacred.
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This sparkling water flowing in streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you land, you must remember that it is sacred. You must teach your children that it is sacred, and any ghostly reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells about the deeds of the life and memory of my people. The murmur of water is the voice of the father of my people. The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. The rivers carry our canoes and feed our children. If we sell you land, you must remember and teach your children that rivers are our brothers and your brothers; and henceforth you must treat the rivers with the same kindness with which you treat your brother.
The red-skinned man always retreated before the pale-faced man walking forward, as a mountain mist recedes before the morning sun. But the ashes of our fathers are holy. Their graves are sacred places, and therefore these hills, trees and tracts of land have become sacred to us. We know that the pale person does not accept our thoughts. For him, one piece of land is no different from another, for he is a stranger who comes at night and takes whatever he wants from the land. For him, the land is not a brother, but an enemy, and he goes forward, conquering it. He leaves the graves of his fathers behind, but he doesn't care. He forgets about the graves of fathers and the rights of his children. He treats his mother earth and his brother sky as things that can be bought, robbed, and sold like a sheep or brightly colored beads. His greed devours the land and leaves a desert behind.
I don't understand: Our thoughts are different from yours. The sight of your cities is a pain to the gaze of a red man. It is possible that this is because Redskins are savages and they do not understand much. There is no silence in the cities of the pale person. There is no place in them where you can listen to how the buds open in spring, how the wings of insects rustle.
It is possible that I am just a savage and do not understand much. It seems to me that the noise only offends the ear. Is this life if a person cannot hear the lonely cry of a wandering light or the nocturnal argument of frogs by a pond? I am a red-skinned person, I don't understand a lot. Indians prefer the soft sound of the wind over the waters of the pond, the smell of this wind, washed by the afternoon rain and saturated with the scent of pine resin.
For a red-skinned person, the air is a treasure, for all living things breathe with one (them): the beast, the tree, and the person breathe with the same breath. The pale-faced man does not notice the air he breathes. He does not feel the stench like someone who has been dying for days. But if we sell you our land, you must remember that for us air is a treasure, that air shares its spirit with all living things. The wind that breathed the breath of our grandfathers takes their last breath. And therefore, the wind will fill the life of our children with the spirit. If we sell our land to you, you must stay away from it and treat it as sacred, like a place where even a pale-faced person can come to taste the sweet wind of meadow flowers.
We will consider your offer to buy our land. If we decide to accept it, I will put one condition: the pale person must treat the animals of this land as his brothers. I am a savage, I cannot think otherwise. I saw thousands of dead buffaloes on the prairie, left behind by a pale-faced man who had fired from a passing train. I am a savage, and I cannot understand how a smoking iron horse can be more important than a bison, which we only kill when we are on the verge of death. What will happen to a person if there are no animals? If all the animals die, people will die from complete loneliness of the spirit. Whatever happens to animals, it happens to humans. Everything is interconnected.
You must teach your children that the earth at their feet is the dust of our ancestors. Then they will rest the earth, the lives of our kind are hidden. Teach your children what we teach our children, and tell them that the earth is our mother. Whatever happens to the earth, it happens to her children.
When a person spits on the ground, he spits at himself.
This is what we know: the earth does not belong to man, but man belongs to the earth. This is what we know: everything in the world is interconnected, like the blood that unites the whole race. Everything is interconnected. Whatever happens to the earth, it happens to her children. Man does not weave the web of life, he is only one thread in it. If he does something with the web, then he does it to himself.
And yet we will consider your offer to go to the reservation you have prepared for my people. We will live apart from you, we will live in peace. It doesn't really matter where we spend the rest of our days.
Our children have already seen their fathers humiliated by defeat. Our warriors were already ashamed. After defeat, their lives turned into idleness, and they ruin their bodies with sweet food and strong drinks. It doesn't really matter where we spend the rest of our days, there aren't many of them left. Only a few hours, only a few winters, and not a single son of the great tribes will remain, who once loved this land so much and who now wander in small groups in the forests. No one will be able to mourn the people who were once as mighty and hopeful as yours. Why should I mourn the death of my people? The tribe is just people, nothing else. People come and go like waves of the sea.
Even the pale-faced, whose God walks alongside and speaks to him as a friend, cannot escape the general fate. In the end, perhaps we will become brothers - we'll see. But we know something that the pale face will someday know: we have one God with you. Now you think that you own your God in the same way you want to take possession of our land, but you are not. He is the God of all people and has equal compassion for the red-skinned and the pale-faced. For Him, this earth is a treasure, and to harm this earth means raising a hand against its Creator. The palefaces will also leave, although perhaps later than the rest of the tribes. Keep dirtying your bed and one night you will suffocate in your own garbage. But in your death you will glow brightly, embraced by the tribe of the power of God, who has brought you dominion over this land and over the Redskins.
For us, such a fate is a mystery, because we do not understand why we need to kill bison, why tame wild horses, why disturb the mysterious thoughts of the forest with the heavy smell of a crowd of people, why stain the hillsides with talking wires.
Where are the thickets? There is none of them. Where is the eagle? He's gone. Why say goodbye to fast ponies and hunting? This is the end of life and the beginning of survival.
We will consider your offer to buy our land. If we agree, we will be safe with the reservation you promised. There we can live the short rest of our days the way we want. When the last red-skinned man disappears from this land, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud hovering over the prairie, the spirit of my people will remain in these shores and forests, for he loves this land as a newborn loves the heartbeat of his mother. If we sell you this land, love it as we love it. Take care of her as we did. Save in your memory the sight of this land as it was when you took it. And with all your strength, with all your thoughts, with all your heart, save her for your children - and love her as God loves us all.
We know one thing: you and I have one God. For Him this land is a treasure.
Even pale-faced people cannot escape the general fate. In the end, we can still become brothers. We will see.
(published in the book Theun Marez, "Teaching of the Toltecs., Publishing House" Sofia ", 1998)
Official history facts:
The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492 marked the beginning of the colonization of the continent by European powers. The settlement of America by European colonialists was accompanied by the displacement and destruction of the indigenous population. Characteristically, there was no single plan for the destruction of the indigenous population of America.
Aboriginal genocide lasted for at least three centuries, in different historical contexts, taking different forms in different parts of America: extermination technology included deliberate poisoning of water sources, forced labor in inhuman conditions, massacre, deportation of Aboriginal people to uninhabitable areas, destruction food supplies, distribution of alcohol, etc. An important role in the destruction was played by the Inquisition, among other things, which carried out cultural genocide. The colonialists almost completely destroyed the cultural heritage of the Indians - many unique languages and original cultures.
In the 19th century, the US Army took part in the destruction of Indians in North America. In the 1880s, a policy of assimilation of Indians began to be actively implemented in the United States and Canada. For this purpose, the children of the Indians were forcibly sent to special state boarding schools. Parents and relatives were forbidden to attend these schools, children were punished if they dared to speak their native language. Torn away from their usual cultural environment, the children of the Indians quickly lost their ethnic identity. Recent cases of genocide against the indigenous population of America include the destruction of the Mayan Indians by the ruling regime of Guatemala during the civil war of 1960-1996.
The resistance of the indigenous people of America to the colonialists was not organized, which was primarily due to the hopeless technological lag of the Indians: they did not know the wheel, metallurgy was at a very low level.
Another reason for the lack of resistance was that the colonialists were often mistaken for the returning White Gods, who gave impetus to the development of civilizations in South America.
The exact number of deaths cannot be counted, since the number of the indigenous population at the time of the beginning of colonization is not determined. Estimates range from tens to hundreds of millions. According to some researchers, the eradication of American Indians is the largest genocide in human history.