“I have been very poor and hungry all winter and am very sick now. In a little while I will die. I should like to be paid for my lands before I die. Many of my people died during the cold winter without getting their pay. When I die my people will be very poor—they will have no property, no chief and no one to talk for them. You must not forget them, Mr. Simmons, when I am gone.
“We are ashamed when we think of the Puyallups, as they have now got their papers. They fought against the whites whilst we, who have never been angry with them, get nothing. When we get our pay we want it in money. The Indians are not bad. It is the mean white men that are bad to them. If any person writes that we do not want our papers they tell lies.
“Oh, Mr. Simmons; you see I am sick, I want you to write quickly to the great chief what I say. I am done.”
Then the old chief retired. Calm his mein, unruffled his spirits, dignified his tirade, though age had bent his stately bearing, for old Chief Sealth had even then—long before that day when he arose to call in question the integrity of a great nation which had promised to pay him for his birthright and had not done so—passed the milestones on life’s great highway, when man’s and Indian’s, too, allotted days of labor are over.
It was the same old story. The dominion of the untutored child of the forest had been usurped by the ruthless hand of civilization and the Indian life had been crushed out.
It had followed the red man from the bleak New England shore to a last great stand on the borders of the western sea. Chief Sealth, like Powantonimo, Red Jacket, Black Hawk, Tecumseh and all the great line of chiefs of the American red man, had given up their ancestral possessions to the pale faces and was ready to die of a broken heart.
DUKE OF YORK
On the evening of the same day (May 15) Simmons and party reached Skagit Head, under Captain R. C. Fay, where some 800 Indians of the tribes of Skagits, Snohomish, Snoqualmies and others were assembled. He made about the same speech to them as at Fort Kitsap, when Hetty Kannim, a sub-chief, answered him as follows:
