So, Kendall, are you going to cull the excess people? (Don't go there)

Very little that Chief Sealth said is actually in print, but that isn't part of it. That long speech attributed to him was actually written by Ted Perry from the University of Texas (Austin) as a script for a southern religious organization's environmental video. An entirely forgettable (and very low production values) film, but that darned speech, that had nothing to do with the Washington State tribal leader, has a life of its own. There was an intermediate fellow, in the 1880's, who kind of summed up what he'd heard Sealth say at a ceremony in 1854. He was your typical unreliable reporter, who included a lot of Victorian values and information that was totally nonsensical. Poetic license to the nth degree. Sealth, as a resident of the Puget Sound area, for example, would have never seen a bison (called buffalo by many) that is referred to, along with a lot of other errors of the sort that locals SHOULD HAVE recognized before they jumped on it as the best thing since sliced bread and emblazoned it on t-shirts and bumperstickers and posters and even at the Washington State pavilion at the Expo in Spokane in the late 1970's.

Here's a citation for anyone interested in following up on the subject--by Rudolf Kaiser, and first published in 1985. "A whole religious concept"? : Chief Seattle's speech(es) : American origins and European reception : almost a detective story." It has been reprinted in a few places.

SRS