Version 1 (below) appeared in the Seattle Sunday Star on Oct. 29, 1887, in a column by Dr. Henry A. Smith.

"CHIEF SEATTLE'S 1854 ORATION" - version . 1

Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for
centuries untold, and which to us appears changeless and eternal,
may change. Today is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds.
My words are like the stars that never change. Whatever
Seattle says, the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as
much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun or the seasons.

The white chief says that Big Chief at Washington sends us greetings
of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him for we know he has
little need of our friendship in return. His people are many. They
are like the grass that covers vast prairies. My people are few.
They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain.
The great, and I presume -- good, White Chief sends us word that
he wishes to buy our land but is willing to allow us enough to li
ve comfortably. This indeed appears just, even generous, for the
Red Man no longer has rights that he need respect, and the offer
may be wise, also, as we are no longer in need of an extensive country.

There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves
of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long
since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a
mournful memory. I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely
decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it, as we too
may have been somewhat to blame.

Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some
real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint,
it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel
and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to
restrain them. Thus it has ever been. Thus it was when the
white man began to push our forefathers ever westward.
But let us hope that the hostilities between us may never return.
We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain.
Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their
own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers
who have sons to lose, know better.

Our good father in Washington--for I presume he is now our father
as well as yours, since King George has moved his boundaries further
north--our great and good father, I say, sends us word that if we do as
he desires he will protect us. His brave warriors will be to us a bristling
wall of strength, and his wonderful ships of war will fill our harbors,
so that our ancient enemies far to the northward -- the Haidas and
Tsimshians -- will cease to frighten our women, children, and old men.
Then in reality he will be our father and we his children. But can that ever be?

Your God is not our God! Your God loves your people and hates mine!
He folds his strong protecting arms lovingly about the paleface and
leads him by the hand as a father leads an infant son. But, He has forsaken
His Red children, if they really are His. Our God, the Great Spirit, seems also
to have forsaken us. Your God makes your people wax stronger every day.
Soon they will fill all the land. Our people are ebbing away like a rapidly
receding tide that will never return. The white man's God cannot love
our people or He would protect them. They seem to be orphans who can
look nowhere for help. How then can we be brothers? How can your God
become our God and renew our prosperity and awaken in us dreams of
returning greatness? If we have a common Heavenly Father He must be
partial, for He came to His paleface children. We never saw Him.
He gave you laws but had no word for His red children whose teeming
multitudes once filled this vast continent as stars fill the firmament.
No; we are two distinct races with separate origins and separate destinies.
There is little in common between us.

To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place
is hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors
and seemingly without regret. Your religion was written upon tablets of
stone by the iron finger of your God so that you could not forget.
The Red Man could never comprehend or remember it. Our religion
is the traditions of our ancestors -- the dreams of our old men, given
them in solemn hours of the night 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 land of their nativity as soon
as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars.
They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this
beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys,
its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and
verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection
over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting
ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them.

Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever
fled the approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees
before the morning sun. However, your proposition seems fair
and I think that my people will accept it and will retire to the
reservation you offer them. Then we will dwell apart in peace,
for the words of the Great White Chief seem to be the words
of nature speaking to my people out of dense darkness.

It matters little where we pass the remnant of our days.
They will not be many. The Indian's night promises to be dark.
Not a single star of hope hovers above his horizon. Sad-voiced
winds moan in the distance. Grim fate seems to be on the Red
Man's trail, and wherever he will hear the approaching footsteps
of his fell destroyer and prepare stolidly 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 the
descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this
broad land or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit,
will remain to mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful
and hopeful than yours. But why should I mourn at the untimely fate
of my people? Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the
waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless.
Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even
the White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend to friend,
cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all.
We will see.

We will ponder your proposition and when we decide we will let
you know. But should we accept it, I here and now make this condition
that we will not be denied the privilege without molestation of visiting
at any time the tombs of our ancestors, friends, and children. Every
part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside,
every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or
happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to
be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore,
thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of
my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand
responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because
it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet
are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Our departed braves,
fond mothers, glad, happy hearted maidens, and even the little
children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season,
will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet
shadowy returning spirits. And when the last Red Man shall
have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have
become a myth among the White Men, these shores will
swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your
children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store,
the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless 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
are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the
returning hosts that once filled them 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 powerless.
Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds.