Quotes from Dee Brown

I've tried word processors, but I think I'm too old a dog to use one.

To survive, the weak must feed on the hearts of the strong.

the Aravaipa village near Camp Grant. Although Camp

Quanah Parker. As the years went by he became a shrewd businessman, built a large house, and successfully managed his farm and ranch. He traveled all over the country, and went to Washington to ride in President Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural parade.

Participants in the massacre were later tried in Tucson and acquitted. To murder an Indian was considered no crime.

A bonnet costs twenty dollars, and implies a shawl and gown to match. A bonnet to one wife, with shawl and gown to match, implies the like to every other wife." The man paused, shook his head ruefully and concluded: "This taste for female finery is breaking up our Mormon homes. Brigham Young may soon be the only man in Salt Lake City rich enough to clothe a dozen wives."28

If the buffalo herd was a large one, sometimes the train would stop for an hour or so, the conductor, engineer, and entire crew joining the passengers in the sport. An

Do you not want churches?" "No, we do not want churches." "Why do you not want churches?" "They will teach us to quarrel about God," Joseph said. "We do not want to learn that. We may quarrel with men sometimes about things on this earth, but we never quarrel about God. We do not want to learn that.

Samoset knew that land came from the Great Spirit, was as endless as the sky, and belonged to no man. To humor these strangers in their strange ways, however, he went through a ceremony of transferring the land and made his mark on a paper for them. It was the first deed of Indian land to English colonists.

Such a development endangered the entire Indian policy of the government, which aimed to eradicate everything Indian among the tribes and make them over into white men.

The white man knows how to make everything," he said, "but he does not know how to distribute it.

We must live near the buffalo or starve.

Only the New Englanders, who had destroyed or driven out all their Indians, spoke against Manifest Destiny.

The Great Spirit raised both the white man and the Indian," Red Cloud said. "I think he raised the Indian first. He raised me in this land and it belongs to me. The white man was raised over the great waters, and his land is over there. Since they crossed the sea, I have given them room. There are now white people all about me. I have but a small spot of land left. The Great Spirit told me to keep it.

A subordinate chief, Black Hawk, refused to retreat. He created an alliance with the Winnebagos, Pottawotamies, and Kickapoos, and declared war against the new settlements.

The whites told only one side. Told it to please themselves. Told much that is not true. Only his own best deeds, only the worst deeds of the Indians, has the white man told. —YELLOW WOLF OF THE NEZ PERCÉ

To keep the Indians beyond the 95th meridian and to prevent unauthorized white men from crossing it, soldiers were garrisoned in a series of military posts that ran southward from Fort Snelling on the Mississippi River to forts Atkinson and Leavenworth on the Missouri, forts Gibson and Smith on the Arkansas, Fort Towson on the Red, and Fort Jesup in Louisiana.

Out of all these sources of almost forgotten oral history, I have tried to fashion a narrative of the conquest of the American West as the victims experienced it, using their own words whenever possible

This war did not spring up here in our land; this war was brought upon us by the children of the Great Father who came to take our land from us without price, and who, in our land, do a great many evil things. The Great Father and his children are to blame for this trouble.

Why do you not want churches?" "They will teach us to quarrel about God," Joseph said. "We do not want to learn that.

During the first night of flight, twelve infants and several old people froze to death. The next night, the men killed some of the ponies, disemboweled them, and thrust small children inside to keep them from freezing. The old people put their hands and feet in beside the children. For three days they tramped across the frozen snow, their bare feet leaving a trail of blood, and then they reached Crazy Horse's camp.

He was impressed by Standing Bear's simple statements of why he had come back north, his stoic acceptance of conditions over which he had lost control. "I thought God intended us to live," Standing Bear told Crook, "but I was mistaken. God intends to give the country to the white people, and we are to die. It may be well; it may be well." 12

We are only little herds of buffalo left scattered; the great herds that once covered the prairies are no more. See!—the white men are like the locusts when they fly so thick that the whole sky is a snowstorm.

And so the general announced that he would pay a reward for Delshay's head. In July, 1874, two mercenary Apaches reported separately to Crook's headquarters. Each presented a severed head, identified as Delshay's. "Being satisfied that both parties were earnest in their beliefs," Crook said, "and the bringing in of an extra head was not amiss, I paid both parties.