'One of the most famous speeches in 19th century American history wasn't actually written until the 1970s. '
In 1854, the great leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish tribes, Chief Seattle, delivered a stirring speech to his people about the need to respect nature. It featured lines that have been quoted by a broad range of credible sources, such as, "The earth is our mother," "How can you buy and sell the sky?" and "When the last red man has vanished from this earth, these shores will still swarm with the invisible dead of my people." Yet, although Seattle did indeed deliver a speech around 1854-55, no one knows what he said; he spoke in Lushootseed, which was translated into another Native American dialect, and from there to English -- decades after the fact. The passionate words we've come to associate with Seattle were written by a screenwriter in 1971.