Quotes from Dee Brown

At a place known only to them they buried Crazy Horse somewhere near Chankpe Opi Wakpala, the creek called Wounded Knee.

by the members of the Hotamitanio, or Dog Soldier Society.

The white men were as thick and numerous and aimless as grasshoppers, moving always in a hurry but never seeming to get to whatever place it was they were going to.

One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk. —TASHUNKA WITKO (CRAZY HORSE)

If the Poncas were permitted to leave their new reservation in Indian Territory and walk away as free American citizens, this would set a precedent which might well destroy the entire military-political-reservation complex.

He was so certain it was the right thing to do. And we all know, don't we, gentlemen, of the deadliness of righteous men?

Gli indiani avevano l'impressione che questi europei odiassero tutto ciò che faceva parte della natura: le foreste con i loro uccelli e i loro animali, le radure, l'acqua, il suolo e l'aria stessa.

I quattro prigionieri, tutti i bambini, apparvero illesi; infatti quando un soldato chiese ad Ambrose Archer, di otto anni, come lo avevano trattato gli indiani, il ragazzo rispose che avrebbe "preferito restare con gli indiani se fosse stato possibile".

The agreement an Indian makes to a United States treaty, is like the agreement a buffalo makes with his hunter when pierced with arrows. All he can do is lie down and give in.

flag tied to the end of a long lodgepole and was standing in front of his lodge, holding the pole, with the flag fluttering in the gray light of the winter dawn. I heard him call to the people not to be afraid, that the soldiers would not hurt them; then the troops opened fire from two sides of the camp.

Toro Seduto] non riusciva a capire come gli uomini bianchi potessero essere così incuranti dei loro poveri. "L'uomo bianco sa fare tutte le cose," disse "ma non sa come distribuirle.

Robert C. Winthrop says: "Professed patriotism may be made the cover for a multitude of sins.

Their musical names remained forever fixed on the American land, but their bones were forgotten in a thousand burned villages or lost in forests fast disappearing before the axes of twenty million invaders.

Had Colonel Carrington visited the scene of the Sand Creek Massacre, which occurred only two years before the Fetterman Massacre, he would have seen the same mutilations—committed upon Indians by Colonel Chivington's soldiers. The Indians who ambushed Fetterman were only imitating their enemies, a practice which in warfare, as in civilian life, is said to be the sincerest form of flattery.

The greatest concentration of recorded experience and observation came out of the thirty-year span between 1860 and 1890—the period covered by this book. It was an incredible era of violence, greed, audacity, sentimentality, undirected exuberance, and an almost reverential attitude

history has a way of intruding upon the present, and

Nothing lives long Only the earth and mountains — Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West . (Holt Paperbacks; 30th Anniversary edition January 23, 2001) Originally published 1970.

Nothing lives long Only the earth and the mountains.

When I was at Washington the Great White Father told me that all the Comanche land was ours, and that no one should hinder us in living upon it. So, why do you ask us to leave the rivers, and the sun, and the wind, and lie in houses? Do not ask us to give up the buffalo for the sheep. The young men have heard talk of this, and it has made them sad and angry. Do not speak of it more…' - Parra-Wa-Samen (Ten Bears) of the Yamparika Comanches

One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk.' - Tashunka Witko (Crazy Horse)

So tractable, so peaceable, are these people," Columbus wrote to the King and Queen of Spain, "that I swear to your Majesties there is not in the world a better nation. They love their neighbors as themselves, and their discourse is ever sweet and gentle, and accompanied with a smile; and though it is true that they are naked, yet their manners are decorous and praiseworthy.

During the time of the white man's Civil War, troubles arose between the Modocs and the settlers. If a Modoc could not find a deer to kill for his family, he would sometimes kill a rancher's cow; or if he needed a horse he would borrow one out of a settler's pasture.

Nothing lives long Only the earth and mountains

They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it.