Talk:Chief Seattle

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View comments (edit) This comment concerns Chief Seattle. The article about him is informative, and his edited speech is also interesting. I was looking for what I consider to be an even better statement by him of the views expressed in the speech, and that was the statement apparently contained in a letter by him to the US President. It is quoted at the end of Chapter I of The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers. Does anyone know where the text quoted there cam from? 63.3.14.1 17:49, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

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[edit] Heading

I'd like to add more context to the article related to "Seattle's Reply" (namely the role of poet H.A. Smith, who published the first purported text of the speech in 1887), but before I do, I'd like to see if anyone has an attribution on a very vague statement I think is wrong. In the article right now, it says, "It is most usually called Seattle's Reply since it was said to be a response to a proposed treaty (which Seattle advised accepting)."

As I understand it, the occasion of the speech was Isaac Stevens parlay with the Indians, arranged by Doc Maynard in January 1854. This is a full 11 months before the first Indian treaty in the region, and that was the Treaty of Medicine Creek, in which Chief Seattle played no part. (Chief Seattle eventually signed a treaty in January 1855.) I have to suspect someone has confused the events of January 1854 and January 1855, but it's hard to prove or disprove "it was said to be." Said by whom? When?

My sources on the 1854 events are Bill Speidel's Doc Maynard (p. 169-70) and http://www.historylink.org/_output.CFM?file_ID=1427. For the 1855 events, Doc Maynard (p. 176) and http://www.historylink.org/output.cfm?file_ID=1959.

Unless we get a clear consensus, I'm going to let this sit for a week before I make edits, to give anyone who feels a stake in this matter time to reply. -- Jmabel 04:28, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Name?

Some sources (e.g. Britannica 2004 DVD) give the name as 'Seathl' (which obviously suits 'Seattle' better than 'Sealth'). In case it is definitely incorrect, I think it should be mentioned in the article to avoid confusion. (My personal and somewhat wild guess would be it was originally pronounced as a voiceless or semivoiceless 'l', which would explain the existence of both versions, but as I know nothing about the languages of that area, it can be far from the truth, too.) --Oop 17:58, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that is another spelling that has been seen. FWIW, as I understand it "Sealth" (which lives on in the name of a high school in Seattle) would properly be pronounced something like See-al-tuh-huh, though, of course, the high school ends up rhyming with "wealth". Let's face it, not many of the historians writing in the 19th century U.S. worried a lot about getting native names right. We are stuck with many conflicting variants. We probably should mention "Seathl" also. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:37, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sealth vs. Seattle

While I understand the need to name the article "Chief Seattle" it seems to me that it is more correct to refer to him as "Sealth" (or some variation thereof). I've tried editting the introduction to allow for that: Chief Sealth" (Ts'ial-la-kum), better known today as Chief Seattle Zzat o.k.? rewinn 05:06, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation

I still do not understand why a name, used in a foreign, non-literary language would be written down as "Sealth", if it was pronounced in a way that English native speakers - or probably rather language scholars, following international conventions - would write down as "Ts'ial-la-kum". Allowing for the idiosyncrasy of English pronounciation, if I read "Sealth", I would transcribe it as "Si-alth" or rather "Si-elth" for an "international audience", i.e. individuals who are not used to those idiosyncrasies. If I take "Tsial-la-kum" to be what language scholars write, folowing conventions that deliberately seek to avoid idiosyncrasies of any one single language, I would transcribe it as "(T)see-ul--lu-koum" for those drilled in idiosyncratic English pronounciation patterns, to get the pronounciation "right". The two do not match at all.

So I wonder, why and how the riddle may be solved ?

Regards, Sophophilos: 147.142.186.54 (talk) 11:52, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Are you asking why Arthur Denny spelt it "Seattle" (on the front of the grave marker) and "Sealth" (on the back) while the correct pronunciation was most likely something else?rewinn (talk) 06:50, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Chinook Jargon translation issue

I chipped in the bit about the Smith version being too flowery for Chinook Jargon to be able to translate; the two-stage process from Lushootseed through simultaneous translation into Chinook to be remembered by Smith and written down later in English, or assembled from remembered reports, probably accounts for some of the flourish but it's a truism that the text of the speech as it's known could not possibly have been conveyed through Chinook Jargon. I know - I've tried; anyone who wants to see the attempt is welcome to email me mikecleven_at_gmail.com and you'll see what I mean.

BTW pron. of the -lth in Sealth is something like 'tl' or 'kl' mixed with 'lh'; very much like the Welsh double-ll, but a bit crunchier; it's not see-al-tuh-huh but more like see-aLH, where LH is that sound I'm talking about.Skookum1 08:36, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

You wrote "It is worth mentioning that many of the concepts and words present in Smith's version would be difficult to convey in the Chinook Jargon, and it must be accepted that Smith's rendition may attempt to capture the style of whatever Seattle's speech really was, rather than its specific contents." I've removed "It is worth mentioning" as pure POV. I'm not happy about "it must be accepted" for the same reason: Wikipedia shouldn't be telling the reader what opinions they "must" accede to. (Bill Speidel rather doubts that Smith's rendition was even an "attempt to capture the style of… Seattle's speech", suggesting that it was pretty much made out of whole cloth.) Anyway, it would be much better if we can cite someone on this all; I'm guessing that if you know your way around Chinook jargon, you would either know who to cite or may even have published on this yourself someplace citable. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:50, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I'll have to work on a cite, other than my own site http://www.cayoosh.net/hiyu/ which has been up about eight years, and was one of the founding sites of the online CJ community, which I'm out of now doing better things (politics which I need not go into here). The actual issue of the Seattle speech has not been studied by a Chinookologist that I know of; I didn't complete my academicization (I have a problem with deadlines, and procrustean ideological boxes favoured within various disciplines so never completed a degree in any of them; this doesn't mean I don't know my stuff; I can write CJ as good as any other cultus whiteman who knows it, and know the idiom. I'm not original research; I'm the research, even though I'm self-taught I can think/express myself in it.

What I can do, perhaps, instead of the bit how I've written is just explain how it is unlikely that what Seattle said in Lushootseed was completely conveyed by his translator, who spoke to a white translator who rendered it into English, and then was recorded by memory/impression many years later. The essential point is that while perhaps these things were sayable in Lushootseed, the white translator was getting his version from the Chinook Jargon account told not by Seattle but by his necessary intermediary. Lushootseed is no doubt quite eloquent; it is difficult to be so in Chinook, other than getting very theatrical (gesticulation and gesture were part of CJ, though not in any organized fashion; whatever worked). And there's stuff in Seattle's speech that just doesn't exist; what's uploaded if it's there is only a draft; I never wrote a commentary like I'd meant to; just made a stab at translating. But the limited lexicon of CJ failed me; the buffalo thing continues to stump me because hyas moos-moos is buffalo in standard CJ (moos-moos is cattle) and while there were moose in the Puget Sound area, and hyas (big/huge/impressive) they were too, they were hyas mowitch - which could also be used for elk. The Pacific Northwest peoples knew of buffalo; but there weren't any in the district, nor within hundreds of miles.

Now, see, I could cite by own site (I think http://www.cayoosh.net/hiyu/Sealth.html http://www.cayoosh.net/hiyu/Seattle.html might be uploaded) - but that's a conflict of interest, enit?...; There's no academic paper or journal item on the issue (that I know of), other than my posting to L-CHINOOK about it long ago; my version/attempt of it may be there; I gave up with some passages because it just wasn't practical to try and say it. CJ can be like Occam's Razor, at least in its pidgin forms if not in Grand Ronde; if it's too complicated to figure out how to say, it's not necessary to be said. And a lot of what's in the famous version of Seattle's speech I defy you to get a complete translation of from any other Chinookologist; I'll dig a good list out later, other than what's on Chinook Jargon already in refs (my site's been there for a while).

The language used to convey what I mean can be whatever it has to be; what I'll do is post some samples of given phrases that are awkward/non-starters for translation (and context - like, what's Sealth doing talking about buffalo anyway? Buffalo in Puget Sound . . . ??). It's not just a question of overromanticism on Smith's part; it's the actual text just couldn't sound that way in Chinook. "You can say anything in the Chinook Jargon if you string the words together right" (and use gestures, as was typical, in comparison to the more taciturn delivery of the old traditional languages); and there are things you can say in Chinook that you just can't say in English; but it's even more true of English into Chinook. Anyway, I'll dig some out and post a few here and you'll see what I mean. Lushootseed maybe could convey much of what's in the version we know, if not all; but Chinook definitely not Skookum1 23:20, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Comment - As to the original pronuciation of "Seattle's" name, there is a stela in Pioneer Square in Seattle with inscriptions in Lushootseed on one side and English on the other. One inscription says in English "The streets are our home now, Chief Seattle." On the Lushootseed side the form that corresponds to "Seattle" is "Si?alh" (actually they use the normal barred l) Writing it See-alth in Englsih gets you pretty close to the correct pronunication.

Si?alh I understood to be See-alth; the place I'm from is called Shalalth, pron. Shal-ATH in English and Tsalalh in St'at'imcts (not in their official orthography; might be Ts'alalh with an accent on one of the a's. Can't think of another example where -alh/alth on the end of something became -"addle", though. St'at'imcets' version of the [?] character is a [7] where the tail of the seven drops below the baseliene, like a [g]. Yeah, I know square brackets aren't right for orthography; should be another kind of parentheses, but Wiki would do something with one of those if I used it.Skookum1 06:56, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

The "tl" or "kl" sound mentioned above is something different, actually two different somethings. Lushhotseed has a phoneme that starts as a "t" and releases as a voicless "l", and then also a glottalized version: the same sound followed by a glottal stop. That gives a total of three of these sounds: lh, tl, and tl'

Jim.

Yeah, I knew there was a range in various languages; 'same as there's a distinction in English. I think there's a distinction in St'at'imcets but I mostly see the "lh" form, whatever the other is, they also have -llh as in -ullh, people/nation/tribe/community (as opposed to [-umicw, -imc, people/organization/govt-entity). I've heard a distinction, between an elder and someone raised in the new language-rejuvenation era, which has adopted the Fountain dialect as standard Upper St'at'imc; I remember elders speaking on the train and their 'lh' sound was a lot crisper, more like a "tlh"; unless it wasn't the same sound. Do the Halkomelem and Straits Salish group make the distinction ? Coastal phonology always sounds/looks a lot more elaborate to me in its range of sounds/flavours of phonemes. Probably a lot of variation across the Salishan groups, same as s/sh/ts/ts' and k/kw/k'/kw'/q/q'/qw/qw' (...g/gw etc.), but I've only waded through St'at'imcets mostly, other than CJ.

It was from CJ that I became aware of the potential kl/tl/lh commonality as while its given speakers may have distinguished those sounds in their actual speech, it didn't matter for the hearer because the distinction wasn't made in Chinook Jargon; it wasn't necessary for comprehension or meaning. As with any widely-spoken tongue, inherently one that was near-exclusively a second language for the majority of those who spoke it (originally all of those who spoke it), it follows that the habitual phonology of each local language/community would be reflected in the sounds they used to vocalize the Jargon with; same as a King George Man (British) or or Boston Man or a Chinese (('d used the CJ term (but it's offensive in English now), or a Kanaka (resident/settler or contractee Hawaiian) or Dutchman - any European other than King George Men or Pasiooks ("cloth people" - French, because of the Metis traders; paseese = cloth). Can't see I know of words for Mexicans, Portuguese and other special groups here in those days, not in CJ anyways; nor the Spanish; other than those words themselves; though the Mowachaht must have had a word for them they weren't around long enough for words to spread into CJ as it evolved.

CJ didn't matter how you pronounced it; it worked any which way; so if you pronounced the word for "good, well" the one way - "kloshe", instead of "tloosh" - or spelled it differently despite essentially pronouncing it the same way (which is part of the problem with most of the historical lexicons and wordlists, which were all pre-IPA and IPA wouldn't have mattered because the language didn't have a standard phonology; it didn't have the time to need or evolve one. The creolized form in Grand Ronde does have a standardized phonology, and it also evolved by further input from Oregon-Columbia Native American tribes relocated to the Grand Ronde Agency. And I think in their case I'm not familiar with their sound system that much but I don't think there's a distinction there. I think they use the 'tl' in their orthography; it's been a long time since I've looked at their stuff. In St'at'imcets it seems a bit thicker than the Welsh ll I heard in North Wales; I've heard they're supposed to be similar but I don't know by how much.Skookum1 06:56, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

All I can say is dang that's good scholarship! Thanks! rewinn 05:08, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category Suggestion: Chiefs and Native Leaders

Not sure what to call it; but the idea would be to have a common page where famous native chiefs and leaders can be listed; from this case and Maquinna, up on Nootka Sound in the fur trade, through Sitting Bull, Stadacona, even Russell Means and other moderns. There's a bunch that do or will have pages: Red Cloud, Black Elk, Poundmaker, Columneetza, Chief Joseph, Geronimo . . . need I go on?Skookum1 08:39, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Something other than Category:Native American leaders? -- Jmabel | Talk 04:54, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Uh, actually I found it just after I posted that; and by consequence also found the First Nations leaders category which is the Canadian apposite to Native American leaders. Be nice to have a collective term; I note that Native American religious leaders/spiritual leaders or whatever is split off from the political leaders. I'd been looking for the right Category for Maquinna, Hyas Tyee of the Mowachaht of Nootka Sound in the fur trade era; but it's on the Canadian side of the historical line so I put him under First Nations leaders. Sometimes it's cross-border; Sitting Bull and Tecumseh are part of Canadian history, too, and there's others (including Chief Joseph, who was trying to make it here but he got outrun) including Sealth and certain others where the line is blurred between the two; Maquinna almost qualifies, but the American ("Boston") vessels that visited Friendly Cove on occasion were minor blips in American history, in compariso in to the Nootka Sound dispute - even though the Nootka Conventions were to also open the coast for American use for a good next fifty years - until the Oregon Treaty in 1846, in fact, and even up to the declaration of the mainland colony of BC in 1858.Skookum1 23:26, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Chinook Jargon version linked

Found it; it was in my webspace already at http://www.cayoosh.net/hiyu/seattle.htm. On having a quick look at it just now, my sense of the Jargon has changed a bit and there are various idioms I might use something different for. I'd made it a fair bit of a ways, just to see if it could be done, but finally bogged down because of a lack of available lexicon for things in Smith's version of Seattle's speech. Anything on the linked page is quite a few years old but if there's interest I'll re-edit it; I think the current line in italics, which is the best approximation in Chinook of the English version of the speech, is misleading about how a Chinook Jargon speaker might actually talk, so on looking at it just now I had the idea to do a line as to what might have been said, rather than trying to reverse-engineer directly from English back to the Jargon. That approach is one of the failings of the big historical lexicons like Shaw; constantly trying to convey English concepts by the use of a laborious Chinook constructions that aren't really necessary or relevant.

Example:

Whatever Seattle says, the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun

Kah Seathl mahsh wawa, hyas tyee kopa Washington mamook skookum tumtum kopa naika, kahkwa chako kilapi sun,(approximation in Chinook, see English direct-translation that follows)

What Seathl says [orders], the great chief in Washington can believe in me [be strong-hearted towards me], as comes back the sun, (lit. transl. of the Chinook as translated above)

Here's a new stab at it:

Seattle wawa ukuk. Yaka hyas tyee kopa Boston man (perhaps hyas Boston tyee), yaka skookum iskum kloshe kopa naika, dret kahkwa kwanesum sun mamook get-up. Nawitka

Rough literal version of preceding:

Seattle says this (thing) [or alt. potentially Seattle mamook ukuk wawa - Seattle made these words]. Him the big chief/lord of the Boston Men, he can hold/have good on me, right/certainly as always the sun makes its rising, and that's fer damshur.

I'm not happy with that last phrase. Mercantile and socializing language that it was, I can't think of a Chinook Jargon word for "trust" or "have faith in". And the sense of "can" in the English version isn't quite the same as the more potent and highly direct "skookum" able/can verb in Chinook; using skookum means "you sure as hell can do something" much more like "um, yeah you can be sure that...". Iskum kloshe is the best I could do on short notice for "rely" - "hold good", iskum kloshe kumtux is "have good thoughts", although not in the sense of "rely".

Nawitka isn't "and that's for damshur" but the latter is at least a darned good approximation of the standard CJ emphatic; the other is dret (or delate) or hyas dret -- from the French droit (correct, true, straight); hyas dret is is equivalent to French-Canadian tout-dret ("right on").

Problem with CJ is that phrases like "yaka skookum iskum kloshe kumtux naika" - without the ubiquitous preposition kopa, can be taken either way if seen in print. "He can have good understands/thoughts of me" vs. "I understand well that he is strong". Grand Ronde's creolized Jargon solves this old quandary in the Jargon by a more developed syntax and word order, but because of the completely uninflected nature of the CJ vocabulary (other than stray -s plurals, e.g. Bostons or Boston mans instead of Boston man or Boston men) it's only by context that a phrase like the preceding, or any one of a hundred idioms, be properly understood. A good example of this variability is mamook kloshe, which means to make good, to do good things. It also means to heal, to fix, to get better, to make something right, to do something correctly, and more.....NB in Grand Ronde's Jargon mamook is pornographic and they equivalent verb (to do, to make, to act) is munkSkookum1 09:19, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tyee

What does "peacetime tyee" means?

The opposite of "war prsident", actually; I hadn't noticed that in the text previously; don't think I put it there. A tyee is a chief or boss, and the usual title for a Native American leader of Seattle's rank would be Hyas Tyee - Great Chief, translated by the Spanish and the early British mariners as "king".Skookum1 18:10, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

http://www.wrvmuseum.org/journal/journal_0702.htm "Tenas Wawa* Chinook Jargon by Kenneth (Greg) Watson "Here in the Northwest, we have a heritage of words found nowhere else in the world: words like tyee ... From the Nootkan or Wakashan languages of Vancouver Island, meaning a chief, boss, leader, or anything large or superior of its kind. Examples of its use include tyee sammon (King Salmon), saghalie tyee (God, literally Chief Above), and tyee kopa Washington for the President of the United States. This is one of the best-known Chinook Jargon words, partly because of its long-time use as the title of the University of Washington yearbook."

How can this information be integrated with the article? Standing alone in the article, "tyee" is a bit of a mystery, but the above does not seem to be enough information to its own article. Is there perhaps a Chinook Jardon wiktionary to link to? rewinn 23:57, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Tyee has passed into the English of the region; the word would be at least moderately familiar to any Seattleite, though they might not know the exact meaning. I'd say it can go into the English Wiktionary as a word derived from Chinook jargon. - Jmabel | Talk 03:50, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Speech

It seems unlikely that Sealth actually thanked the president for buying his land. No doubt he made a speech; no doubt those who recorded it did so in a way that served their own purpose; but it just doesn't seem likely that the Duwamish recognized land title the same way that Isaac Stevens did or that, if they did, that Sealth would be authorized to sell it at any price, or that even if he could, that he would thank Isaac Stevens for ripping them off. More scholarship is needed. rewinn 02:07, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I have reinserted the information on the speech in the lead. WP:LEAD states that the lead must include brief mentions on all important aspects of the topic- so that people who only read the lead still get an full treatment of the subject. Apart form having given name to the city of Seattle most people know Chief Seattle only from the 1971 fictious speech which is often quoted as having been given by him in enviromentalist publications. It is important that people searching for Chief Seattle are informed that this speech is a hoax.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 08:30, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Since the speech reflects a controversy, I have given it its own "controversy" section. That will enable anyone who has never heard of Seattle, yet has heard of Chief Seattle's speech, decide for themselves whether it is a hoax. Or whatever. I see no evidence that "most people know Chief Seattle" from an obscure movie. rewinn 05:01, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

As I research the hoax, I am struck by how very interesting a hoax it is. "Brother Eagle, Sister Sky: A Message From Chief Seattle" is still in print and, apparently, read in schools. I hope to expand Sealth's bio considerably so the hoax does not acquire undue weight; perhaps a fuller exposition might go into Smith's bio (his perpetration of the hoax makes him noteworthy). rewinn 05:16, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Now that I've learned more, I would suggest Smith wasn't really hoaxing; he was merely writing down what he remembered from his notes of decades earlier, perhaps in his very flowery style (his poetry, as recorded by Emily Denny, would not be in fashion today IMHO.) He stated plainly that he was recording only part of what Sealth said. Later authors might be to blame for any hoaxing by the material they added ... although it the movie was intended to be historical fiction I suppose "hoax" wouldn't be quite right either since historical fiction is .... fiction. rewinn 22:33, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

There still should be a mention of the speech in the lead. WP:LEAD clearly states that the lead should include mentionsof all important aspects of the topic. The controversy now has its own section - how then can it not be notable enough for mentioning in the lead?·Maunus· ·ƛ· 23:23, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Urban Legend

Is there of any interest that Chief Seattle is connected with an urban legend, having to do with his speech?

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/seattle.htm

At first I was going to suggest you edit the article to include your comments, then I decided what the hey and did so myself. Rather than refer to snopes, I found some other sources. Nothing against snopes but it's only as good as its sources. rewinn 04:54, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] More than one Sealth

I was just perusing J.A. Costello's Indian History of the Northwest - Siwash which despite its title and old-fashioned and often maudlin tone has some useful bits in it, and some old-style engravings too; awkward to use as each page is a JPG, but still useful. What brought me to this talkpage is a discussion somewhere in it - p.20 or so - about this Chief Seattle really being "Sealth II" and that there have been other Sealth's since; it's a hereditary name, not sure if it's still "alive" (that there's someone who owns it, names being property in indigenous cultures hereabouts, though more formally farther upcoast). We have the same problem with Maquinna and Wickaninnish and Khahtsahlano and Kwah (chief), and others; not sure what title might work Chief Seattle (other) ain't right....in Maquinna's case either the current title-holder or an associate posted on Talk:Maquinna, so we should be mindful of this I'd say.....Skookum1 (talk) 16:38, 14 April 2008 (UTC)