On this day the church remembers the eloquent orator and 19th Century unifier: Chief Seattle, Wager of Peace.

Saint Noah Sealth (translated as “Seattle”) was born in the late 1700’s in the lush North West with the lullaby of the Puget Sound coaxing him to sleep at night. He first saw a European when Captain George Vancouver brought a gun ship to town carrying many products from far off places. Saint Seattle’s fascination with these new people grew and grew.

In the 1830’s Saint Seattle adopted the Roman Catholic faith even while retaining many of the ways of the indigenous faith. He learned to get along well with both other indigenous tribes and the European invaders, and encouraged everyone to wage peace and not war. In early 1855 he signed a treaty at Point Elliott in the heart of settlement now known as Seattle, a city that bears his name, ensuring that the Duwamish Confederacy, an alliance of local indigenous tribes, would retain land in the area even as the Europeans continued to take and take and take.

Governor Isaac Stevens of the newly created Washington Territory spoke to the residents of this new settlement, and Saint Seattle then also gave a speech, captivating the audience and living on into history. A Dr. Henry Smith was taking notes and reconstructed the speech, and it is notable that Saint Seattle refused to speak the pidgin English or Chinook that Governor Stevens asked him to use, and instead went with his mother Duwamish tongue.

Even as the treaty was being struck, Saint Seattle reminded the gathered of deep and sacred truth,

“Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has bee hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks which seem to be dumb and dead as they swelter in the sun along with 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 to yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch.

Our departed braves, our fond mothers, glad, happy-hearted maidens, and even our babies who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet the shadowing returning spirit.

When the last of my people have perished…the shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe…for the dead are not powerless.

Dead, did I say?

There is no death, only a change of worlds.”

Even when you wage peace you can refuse to be bullied.

Saint Seattle died on this day in 1866. It is said that though many wanted to name the city Seattle after this giant of history, the dear saint did not like the idea and asked that they choose another name. A city is for all the people, not just one.

Saint Seattle is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that the land on which we tread is for all people, not just one…which should make us reimagine how we might use all the land we trod on, and the buildings we “own,” and the space we take up.

-historical bits from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations

-art by Tolga Ertem, “Chief Seattle.”