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Black Fish, (Shawnee) recalling 1778 adoption of Daniel Boone into tribe.
"We have good reason not to trust the Americans, but I am by no means convinced we do not have a sufficiency of cause to mistrust the British as well. Their past actions have shown us that they do only that which most supports their own aims and desires. They say they are our friends, but sometimes we must watch friends even more closely than enemies."
Tecumseh, (Shawnee) 1791
"I look to you as a good being. Order your people to be just. They are always trying to get our lands. They come on our lands, they hunt on them; kill our game and kill us.Keep them on one side of the line, and us on the other. Listen, my father, to what we say."
Kaskaskia, (Shawnee) to George Washington
"The whole white race is a monster who is always hungry, and what he eats is land."
Chiksika, (Shawnee)
"If the Indian loves, he speaks the truth; but if he does not, he is silent."
Tecumseh, (Shawnee 1808)
"You have taken me prisoner with all my warriors. I am much grieved...I expected to hold out much longer and give you more trouble before I surrendered. Black Hawk is now a prisoner of the white man. But he can stand torture, and he is not afraid of death. He is no coward. Black Hawk is an Indian."
Black Hawk, (Saulk)
"No people are all bad, just as none are all good."
Tecumseh, (Shawnee) to his nephew Spemica Lawba 1790
"My reason tells me that land cannot be sold - nothing can be sold but such things as can be carried away."
Black Hawk, (Saulk)
"Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?"
Tecumseh, (Shawnee)
"The Dakota understood the meaning of self-sacrifice, perhaps because their legends taught them that the buffalo, on which their very life depended, gave itself voluntarily that they might live."
Ella Deloria, (Dakota)
"Oh hear me, Grandfather, and help us, that our generation in the future will live and walk the good road with the flowering stick of success. Also, the pipe of peace, we will offer it as we walk the good road to success. Hear me, and hear our plea...."
Black Elk, (Sioux)
"A single twig breaks, but the bundle is strong. Someday I will embrace our brother tribes and draw them into a bundle and together we will win our country back."
Tecumseh, (Shawnee)
"We respected our old people above all others in the tribe. To live to be so old they must have been brave and strong, and good fighters, and we aspired to be like them. We never allowed our old people to want for anything...We looked upon our old people as demigods of a kind, we loved them deeply. They were all our fathers."
Buffalo Child Long Lance, (Sioux)
"Will you ever begin to understand the meaning of the very soil beneath your feet? From a grain of sand to a great mountain, all is sacred. Yesterday and tomorrow exist eternally upon this continent. We natives are guardians of this sacred place."
Peter Blue Cloud, (Mohawk)
"Your words circle like soaring birds which never land. I will try to catch them and take them back for my people to hear."
Wehyehpihrsehnwah, Blue Jacket, (Shawnee) 1791
"When the last red man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall become a myth among white men, these shores shall swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe...when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the stores, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone."
Chief Seattle,(Dwanish)
"The President may sit still in his town and drink his wine, while you and I have to fight it out."
Tecumseh,(Shawnee) to Gov. Harrison, 1810
"Free yourself from negative influence. Negative thoughts are the old habits that gnaw at the roots of the soul."
Moses Shongo, (Seneca)
A brave man dies but once --- cowards are always dying."
Moanahonga, (Iowa)
"Peace.....comes within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wankan tanka, and that this center is really everywhere. It is within each of us."
Black Elk, (Oglala Sioux)
"....everything on this earth has a purpose, every disease an herb to cure it, and every person a mission. This is the Indian theory of existence."
Mourning Dove, (Salish 1888-1936)
"Have patience. All things change in due time. Wishing cannot bring autumn glory or cause winter to cease."
Ginaly-li, (Cherokee)
"They insult us and our wives and our children and our way of life. We are losing our dignity, our self-respect. Why must it be we who turn our backs and walk away when it is we who are injured? Why may we not, as we always have, repay in kind what we receive at the hands of our enemies?"
Chief Outhowwa Shokka, Yellow Hawk, (Shawnee 1775)
"The longer a problem is allowed to exist, the harder it is to return to peace of mind."
Twylah Nitsch, (Seneca)
"The Indian believes
profoundly in silence----
the sign of a perfect
equilibrium.
Silence is the
absolute poise or
balance of body,
mind and spirit.
The man who preserves
his selfhood is ever calm
and unshaken by the
storms of existence.........
What are the fruits of silence?
They are self-control,
true courage or
endurance, patience,
dignity, and reverence.
Silence is the
cornerstone of character."
Ohiyesa,(Santee Sioux)
"You must speak straight so that your words may go as sunlight into our hearts."
Cochise, (Chiricahua Apache)
"He who is present at a wrongdoing and lifts not a hand to prevent it, is as guilty as the wrongdoers."
Estamaza, (Omaha)
"Even if the heavens were to fall on me I want to do what is right...I never do wrong without cause."
Geronimo, (Chiricahua Apache)
"I am tired of fighting...The old men are all dead...The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are...Hear me, my Chiefs!! I am tired: my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more."
Chief Joseph, (Nez Perce)
"My words are tied in one with the great mountains, with the great rocks, with the great trees, in one with my body and my heart. All of you see me, one with this world."
Yokuts prayer
"My young men shall never work. Men who work can not dream, and wisdom comes to us in dreams...You ask me to plow the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my mother's bosom? You ask me to dig for stone. Shall I dig under her skin for her bones? You ask me to cut grass and make hay and sell it and be rich like white men. But how dare I cut off my mother's hair?"
Smohalla, Nez Perce'
"I am a red man. If the Great Spirit has desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. Now we are poor but we are free. No white man controls our footsteps. If we must die we die defending our right."
Sitting Bull, (Hunkpapa Sioux)
"Today is a good day to fight - today is a good day to die."
Crazy Horse, (Oglala Sioux)
"I went up to heaven and saw the Great Spirit and all the people who had died a long time ago. The Great Spirit told me to come back and tell my people they must be good and love one another, and not fight, or steal, or lie. He gave me this dance to give my people."
Wovoka, (Paiute shaman)
"We have learned too much today, so much that we have forgotten how to learn the important lessons of life. We think we have to learn everything from a book. The truth is that we had better learn the truths, those taught by the Ancient Ones."
Cherokee
"We must be united...We must smoke the same pipe....We must fight each other's battles...and more than that, We must love the Great Spirit."
Tecumseh, (Shawnee)
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