Thrawn, what part of "legend" did you not understand?
So I posted something to provoke thought, in the beginning of my post I asked you all to pause a while and read it. Then you arrive like an obnoxius drunk proclaiming that you spent 20 seconds reading it before you post some irrelevant crap.
I'm so sick and tired of you and your damn urban legends page. Are you walking around in december telling kids that santa doesnt exist too? Get a diddlying life.
Also, try to get it into your head that "snopes" is not the ultimate source of truth. It is an internet source, like all other internet sources.
The reason I used the word "legend" is this. Chief Seattle said "something" in 1854. A doctor was present when he said it, and that doctor later published his speech in a newspaper in 1887. In 1932 that newspaper-article was copied and published by John M. Rich. There exists 4-5 versions of the speech, the one I used was the one published by John M. Rich. We will never know exactly what the old indian did say in his speech. What we have to go on is the words of the doctor. Who on his deathbead swore it was true.
Perhaps he added something -such as the 1000 buffalos, or the disturbing cities, or perhaps he translated the original meaning in a different way to make it more understandable...who knows.
Basically it all comes down to this:
The absence of any evidence, the lack of a Duwimish-language text of the speech, the absence of notes bv Dr. Smith, the silence on the part of persons known to have been present during meetings between Stevens and Seattle, and the failure of the speech to appear in the official treaty proceedings create grave doubts about the accuracy of the reminiscences of Dr. Smith in 1887, some thirty-two years after the alleged episode. Thus it is impossible (without new evidence) to either confirm or deny the validity of the speech.
HOWEVER in 1887 Dr. Smith's article was in the Seattle Sunday Star (Oct. 20, 1887) -so No, it was not some movie writer in 1972 who wrote it.
(On his deathbed, Smith reaffirmed the speech's authenticity to Vivian M. Carkeek, who, on his deathbed, told Clark B. Belknap, who in turn told John M. Rich. Rich, Seattle's Unanswered Challenge, p. 45.)
Oh, and the source for the version I presented: A 1932 pamphlet by John M. Rich, copies of which are at the Seattle Historical Society and at the Library of Congress. Mr. Rich, in turn, cites an article in a Seattle newspaper from 1887 in which a Dr. Henry A. Smith reconstructed a speech by the Duwamish Chief on the occasion "When Governor Stevens first arrived in Seattle and told the natives that he had been appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs for Washington Territory," an event dated by Rich as December 1854
