Chief Seattle

[laughs]

Radios have come on by themselves, and there have been chi- there have been sightings of Chief Seattle, which his actual name was Chief Sealth, C-E-A-L-T-H. Seattle is, um, comes from that word.

Um, they, they, people refer, will refer to have as Chief Seattle, but it was actually Chief Sealth.

And he was a Native American who had a daughter, Angelina, who lived on that spot before the market was built.

And she, um, she like used to dig for clams there, and she lived in a unsheeted, unheated shack.

A lot of the cities are named after their various chiefs and whatnot.

Seattle, Chief Seattle.

Okay, before you say it, you have to do an acknowledgement.

[upbeat music]

... yeah.

Which makes me think of, um, I don't think it's the actual, uh, Chief Seattle and, uh, his letter to the US government.

I think there's some mythology around that, but there's a thing in it where it says, "At some point you cease living and you just exist."

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Um, and, and I do have a bunch of, of fines for some of that stuff.

Um, I usually start looking at way marks when I get to an area and have either found all of the geocaches or, um, it is an area that for whatever reason may not have a whole bunch of um but virtual caches weren't a thing and so way marks are are a thing um and so when you go on to uh you know areas that have roads that go through indian reservations out here in the west there aren't a whole lot of geocaches but there are tons of way marks Out of these really historical, significant places, there is a virtual cache that I got at Chief Seattle's grave, the Indian chief who the town of Seattle was named after.

And believe it or not, there were another five waymarks in the cemetery there.

Oh, wow.

It was something close to that.

You know, some people say Sealth.

There's different ways of pronouncing these names.

And so, you know, but it wasn't Seattle.

And they did have these panels on the wall.

And when we were up there, the guide read us Chief Seattle's letter to the U.S. government that he wrote I think in 1879, 1867.

And it was very, very touching because you felt the way the Indigenous people were connected to the land.

So I just want to read this one little paragraph from that letter.

Even though the rocks, which seem to lie dumb and dead as they grow warm with the sunshines, along the silent shore, they thrill to the memories of past events connected with the lives of my people.

So the idea of being connected to the land, the rocks, the water, you know, and all of that, and, you know, Chief Seattle was asking the government to please be gentle, be gentle with what we love, you know, what is a part of us.

So that was very moving for me.

And the Fremont people vanished.