As sympathetic as I am with the feelings expressed in the translation of Chief Sealth's speech, I always cringe a little when I hear it put forth as an example of native American attitudes toward the natural world. Sealth spoke little or no English, and his speech was translated and written down by a translator who had a somewhat poetic flight of fancy. His translations frequently erred a bit in the direction of literary excess and some of the lines from the speech are patently bogus. Where, for instance, would Sealth have ever seen a buffalo, or had any idea of the importance of the buffalo to the plains tribes? I also doubt that Sealth ever rode a pony anywhere. As accomplished as the tribes of Puget Sound and the coast were as conoeists, they never showed any affinity for horses, nor (before the building of roads) would a horse have been a particularly desireable form of transportation.