Quotes from Dee Brown

To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature - the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy grades, the water, the soil, the air itself.

I was born upon the prairie, where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there are no enclosures and where everything drew a free breath. I want to die there and not within walls. I know every stream and every wood between the Rio Grande and the Arkansas. I have hunted and lived over that country. I lived like my fathers before me, and, like them, I lived happily. Para-Wa-Samen (Ten Bears) of the Tamparika Comanches

The white people 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.

Another Chief remembered that since the Great Father promised them that they would never be moved they had been moved five times. "I think you had better put the Indians on wheels," he said sardonically, "and you can run them about whenever you wish.

Not all of Anthony's officers, however, were eager or even willing to join Chivington's well-planned massacre. Captain Silas Soule, Lieutenant Joseph Cramer, and Lieutenant James Connor protested that an attack on Black Kettle's peaceful camp would violate the pledge of safety given the Indians by both Wynkoop and Anthony, "that it would be murder in every sense of the word," and any officer participating would dishonor the uniform of the Army.

Why do you not want schools?" the commissioner asked. "They will teach us to have churches," Joseph answered. "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.

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.

Already the once sweet-watered streams, most of which bore Indian names, were clouded with silt and the wastes of man; the very earth was being ravaged and squandered. To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature-the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy glades, the water, the soil, and the air itself.

A short time later, near Gallina Springs, Graydon's scouting party came upon the Mescaleros again. What happened there is not clear, because no Mescalero survived the incident.

The Navahos could forgive the Rope Thrower for fighting them as a soldier, for making prisoners of them, even for destroying their food supplies, but the one act they never forgave him for was cutting down their beloved peach trees.

We rarely know the full power of words, in print or spoken.

I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass. Bury my heart at Wounded Knee. —STEPHEN VINCENT BENET

When Joseph died on September 21, 1904, the agency physician reported the cause of death as "a broken heart.

The old men say the earth only endures. You spoke truly. You are right.

whatever comes easily to us we turn away from, but that which slips away from us we will pursue to the ends of the earth.

Indians!" Sitting Bull shouted. "There are no Indians left but me!

Women in the West who insisted on wearing the full-skirted modes of the nineteenth century—including the hoop-skirt, the bustle, and Mother Hubbards—fought a continual battle against a hostile environment. The fact that flowing yards of silk and satin eventually won out over buckskin and rawhide is only one more confirmation of the theory that woman's vanity can conquer all, any place and any time.

And if the readers of this book should ever chance to see the poverty, the hopelessness, and the squalor of a modern Indian reservation, they may find it possible to truly understand the reasons why.

it is better for both parties to come together without arms and talk it over and find some peaceful way to settle it. —SINTE-GALESHKA (SPOTTED TAIL) OF THE BRULÉ SIOUX

words are what give us power, that without words we are nothing, we do not exist.

I now think a little powder and lead is the best food for them," he concluded. 7