In 1854, President of the United States offered to buy very large extent of Indian lands, promising to create a "reservation" for indigenous people. Chief Seattle's response, transcribed below, has been described as the most beautiful and deepest ever made on the environment. On the other hand, shows the difference in worldview between the Reds, for whom nature is sacred, "and the modern civilization that sees things in economic terms. 
"The Great Chief in Washington has instructed us know you want to buy the land along with words of good will. We greatly appreciate this because we know too well how little they need to make our friendship. We consider offer because we know full well that if we did not, the pale faces land snatch us with guns. But how can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the earth? This idea is strange. Neither the freshness air or the sparkle of the water are our How could they be purchased?. You must know that every piece of this land is sacred to my people. The green, sandy beach, the mist in the forest, sunrise through the trees, the brown insects ... The white man's dead forget their land when they begin the journey through the stars. Our dead, however, never stray from the land, which is the mother. We are a part of it, and the fragrant flower, the mud, the horse and the great eagle are our brothers. The rocky crests, the moist brown, the body heat of the horse and man, all belong to the same family.
The crystal clear water flowing through rivers and arrolluelos not only water but which also represents the blood of our ancestors. If you vendiésemos what you would have to remember they are sacred and teach your children well. Also the rivers are our brothers because we are fighting thirst, drag our canoes, we seek to fish ... In addition, each ghostly reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories of the lives of our people, the water's murmur is the voice of my father's father. Yes, great chief of Washington: the rivers are our brothers they quench our thirst, they carry our canoes and feed our children. If we sell you our land will have to remember and teach your children that the rivers are our brothers and also theirs. And therefore, they must treat with the same gentleness with which you treat a brother. Of course we know that the white man does not understand our way of being. Therefore gives a piece of land than another, because they see it as a sister, but as an enemy. 
When and despises it has taken and continues walking. Leave behind the graves of his parents not care. Kidnap the lives of their children and does not care. He does not mind the grave of their parents or their children's heritage forgotten. He treats his mother the earth and his father the sky as things to be bought, operated and sold like sheep and cord colors. His appetite devours the earth, leaving behind an entire desert. I can not understand, your eyes hurt cities of the red man. Maybe it's because we are wild and can not understand. There is no quiet place only in the white man's cities. No place in the spring you can hear the roll of leaves or the murmur of the wings of an insect. Perhaps it is that I am a savage and do not understand things well. The noise of the city is an insult to the ear. And I wonder "what kind of life is the man who can not hear the lonely cry of a night heron or discussion of the frogs around the pond?." I'm a Red and I can not understand. We prefer the soft whisper of wind on the surface a pond, and the smell of the wind itself, cleansed by the midday rain, or scented with pine aromas.
When the last red man has vanished from this earth, when not just a memory its shadow, like a cloud passing through a meadow, then there these banks and these forests are inhabited by the spirit of my people. Because we love this country as a child's heartbeat of his mother. If you decide to accept your offer will have to put one condition: that white men consider the animals of this earth as brothers. I'm wild and not understand any other way of life. I have seen thousands of abandoned rotting buffaloes on the prairies, shot by the white man from a train.
'm wild and I do not understand how smoking can import machinery more than the buffalo that we kill only to survive. What can be the man without the beasts?. If animals were to disappear, man would die in a great solitude. Everything that happens to the animals very soon happen to man. All things are linked. Teach your children what we have taught ours, that the earth is our mother.
Everything that happens to the earth, befalls the sons of the soil. If men spit upon the ground they spit upon themselves. One thing we're pretty sure the earth does not belong to man, the man belongs to earth. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. Man did not weave the web of life. He's just a thread. Whatever he does to the web, he does himself. Even the white man, whose God walks and talks with him as friend to friend, is exempt from the common destiny. After all we may be brothers, we'll see. We know one thing that perhaps the white man one day discover, our God is the same God. You might think now that he belongs to you, like I wish that our lands belong. Not so. He is equally the God of all men and their compassion reaches equally to the red skin and the white man. This earth is precious to Him and if damaged will cause the wrath of the Creator. Also the white man will become extinct, perhaps sooner than other tribes. Man has not woven the web of life. Only one of these threads and it is tempting to break the curse if osa network. Everything is tied together as a family blood. If your bed every night ensuciáis die suffocate in your waste. But you will walk towards the destruction of glory and splendor surrounded by the force of God that brought you to this land and for some special designo gave you dominion over it and on the red. This plan is a mystery to us, because we do not understand why they exterminated the buffalo, wild horses are tame, clip the secret corners of the forest with the encouragement of so many men and stuffs the lush landscape of the wired kitchens talkative .
Where is the thick forest? ... GONE.
Where is the eagle? ... GONE.
So life is over and we can only try to survive the action of .
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