Circumstances

“Selling Our Land” was allegedly delivered by Chief Seattle in 1854 when the new US governor visited Seattle (in the area where Chief Seattle's tribe lived) and offered to buy land on behalf of the state from Native Americans. These circumstances are those recorded by Henry A. Smith, a columnist who published Chief Seattle’s speech, 30 years after it was addressed. However, the circumstances and even the authorship of the speech are highly disputed, and many historians now believe that the original version of the speech was lost in translation.

Nevertheless, we do know from history that the expansion of white settlers in the US had pushed Native American tribes out of their territories and forced them to live in smaller areas. Also, in 1851, the US go...