{"id":712,"date":"2010-05-01T19:38:40","date_gmt":"2010-05-01T19:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/?p=712"},"modified":"2010-05-02T19:47:46","modified_gmt":"2010-05-02T19:47:46","slug":"buffaloed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/2010\/05\/buffaloed\/","title":{"rendered":"Buffaloed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Chief Seattle<\/a> was an extraordinarily intelligent and charismatic man, a 19th century leader of Puget Sound Indian tribes. In 1884 he purportedly said, among other things, the following: <\/p>\n

The earth is our mother. What befalls the earth befalls all the sons and daughters of the earth\u2026. I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairies left by the white man who shot them from a passing train… What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The above words have been cited by Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, in his mind-numbing autobiography<\/a>; they have been broadcast over the airwaves of at least six foreign countries; and, according to a 1993 Reader\u2019s Digest<\/i> report, \u201cChief Seattle\u2019s words\u201d are read as \u201ca matter of curriculum\u201d in elementary public schools all across our great country.<\/p>\n

Al Gore<\/a>, of course, routinely trots out Chief Seattle\u2019s words in his own speeches and articles, most famously in his other<\/i> propaganda publication Earth in the Balance<\/a><\/i>, which predates his more mendacious Inconvenient Truth<\/i> by over a decade.<\/p>\n

The problem, of course, as you\u2019ve no doubt already guessed, is that Chief Seattle never made any such speech. He was too smart and too articulate for such hackneyed lines, and doubtless the good chief would be appalled to hear that these words are being put in his mouth like so much bad pemmican<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The \u201cthousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie,\u201d for example (shot by white men from trains), should tip off all would-be quoters of Chief Seattle that this speech is ersatz: buffalo did not \u201croam\u201d anywhere near where Chief Seattle lived, nor did trains run through there until years after his speech was supposedly delivered.<\/p>\n

Also, the \u201cripe hills being blotted out by talking wires\u201d doesn\u2019t fit the timeline either.<\/p>\n

But since when have actual facts really mattered to the religion of environmentalism?<\/p>\n

It turns out that this speech was actually written by a university professor named Ted Perry.<\/p>\n

Ted Perry.<\/p>\n

He was hired to write a documentary about pollution.<\/p>\n

The lie was deliberate, though not on Ted Perry\u2019s part.<\/p>\n

You may read all about this story in \u201cWhat Chief Seattle Said,\u201d by Paul S. Wilson, in \u201cEnvironmental Law\u201d (vol. 22, p. 1451-1468). <\/p>\n

Or, alternatively, on the front page of The New York Times,<\/i> April 1992<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chief Seattle was an extraordinarily intelligent and charismatic man, a 19th century leader of Puget Sound Indian tribes. In 1884 he purportedly said, among other things, the following: The earth is our mother. What befalls the earth befalls all the sons and daughters of the earth\u2026. I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the … <\/p>\n

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