Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion on our fathers for centuries untold, and
     which, to us, looks eternal, may change. To-day it is fair, to-morrow it may be overcast
     with clouds. My words are like the 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 greetings 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
     lands 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 need 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. But 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 hearts, 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 Haidas, 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 our 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 then 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;
     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 or comprehend it.
         Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors, the dreams of our old men, given 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 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 thick 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
     winds moan in the distance. Some grim Nemesis of our race is on the red man's trail,
     and wherever 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 tilled 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 tamanamus [a religious ritualQEd.], 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 have decided we will tell you. But
     should we accept it, I here and now make this the 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 some sad
     experience of my tribe. Even the rocks that seem 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 men 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 shop, upon the highway or in 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 streets
     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.