Akhil Ajmera
Mrs. Green
AP Language and Composition
September 10, 2014
Message to president Franklin Pierce Analysis
1. Chief Seattle’s message is that we need to respect the earth or we will destroy ourselves. He believed that everything in the world is connected and he said, “Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth” (Seattle 824). Seattle is saying that whatever you do to harm the earth is only harming yourself.
2. The target audience that Chief Seattle is trying to reach is the white people that want to take over his land. He calls them out by saying, “The whites, too, shall pass—perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste” (Seattle 824). The use of the words “you” and “your” shows the reader that Chief Seattle was talking to the white men.
3.…show more content… Chief Seattle creates a sarcastic tone by saying, “The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does not understand” (Seattle 823). He uses this sarcastic tone because the white people believe that the Native Americans are too stupid to understand their reasoning by taking their land to build massive cities. However Chief Seattle proves that the Native Americans are smarter than the white men think by not only saying this speech but by also showing all the negative effects of taking their land.
4. Chief Seattle’s uses rhetorical questions to provide emphasis on certain words and makes the reader think about what would happen. Seattle does this when saying, “When the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses all tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by the talking wires, where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone” (Seattle 824). Seattle is just showing all the things that the white men have ruined and with the use of the rhetorical questions shows what could still be