Quotes from Jim Fergus

Yet only the atrocities of the conquered are referred to as criminal acts; those of the conqueror are justified as necessary, heroic, and even worse, as the fulfillment of God's will.

Don't you know that I laugh because it is my last defense against tears?

how odd to think of one's life not as chapters in a book but as complete volumes, separate and distinct.

that's exactly the good thing about the Injun life--you don't have to stop and think about whether or not you're 'happy'--which in my opinionis a highly overrated human condition invented by white folks

As I squat to pee I look upward at the billions of stars and planets in the heavens and somehow my own insignificance no longer terrifies me as it once did, but comforts me, makes me feel a part, however tiny, of the whole complete and perfect universe. . . and when I die the wind will still blow and the stars still shine, for the place I occupy on earth is no more permanent than the water I now make, absorbed by the the sandy soil, dried instantly by the constant prairie wind . . .

Yet only the atrocities of the conquered are referred to as criminal acts; those of the conqueror are justified as necessary, heroic, and even worse, as the fulfillment of God's will.

the Sierra, a region so quiet and pristine that we have the sense of being the first human beings ever to set foot in it. We fall silent ourselves in its midst, as if conversation in a place of such primaevl solitude would be like talking in church.

Your power as a woman, as a mother, is your medicine, and it saved you. Take your courage in that.

Now we move out again, the horses slipping down off the knoll, following the People, who follow the buffalo, who follow the grass, which springs from the earth.

It was our understanding that we were to be instructing them in the ways of the civilized world, not being made beasts of burden, but, as Helen Flight has pointed out, of what use are table manners to those without tables.

Ah but Art never fails anyone, magic and medicine may certainly fail, but never Art.

For their part, the savage men appear to spend an inordinate amount of time lounging around their lodges, smoking and gossiping among themselves...so that it occurs to me that perhaps our cultures are not so different after all: the women do all the work while the men do all the talking.

The law of the jungle which I learned at a young age, and have been trying to escape ever since, is that we what we must to survive.

I, personally, have resolved never to display weakness, to be always strong and firm and forthright, to show neither fear nor uncertainty-- no matter how fearful and uncertain I may be inside; I see no other way to survive this ordeal.

I push him from my mind. This is no act of easy omission on my part; I do not consign him casually to a forgotten past. It is rather an act of will--a kind of self-performed surgery on my soul...the bloodiest of mutilations.

I knew then that when we had crested that final tortuos pass in the rocks and dropped down into this valley, we had crossed a threshold into another world, a world with its own sun and moon, and its own separate race of man.

can't help but think once again what a foolish, loutish creature is man. Is there another on earth that kills for the pure joy of it?

The natives have a way of putting it themselves: "the real world behind this one," they call it, suggesting that what we see and understand of the surface world is but a façade, which they are capable of navigating beyond. And so it is that in living among them, such things as shape-shifters, talking bears, men turning into birds and flying, all seem somehow plausible.

We curse the US government, we curse the Army, we curse the savagery of mankind, white and Indian alike. We curse God in his heaver. Do not underestimate the power of a mother's vengeance." (from the journals of Margaret Kelly)

Franchement vu la façon dont j'ai été traitée par les gens dits "civilisés", il me tarde finalement d'aller vivre chez les sauvages.

and firm and forthright, to show neither fear nor uncertainty—no matter how fearful and uncertain I may be inside; I see no other way to survive this ordeal.

A peace is of the nature of a conquest; For then both parties nobly are subdu'd, And neither party loser." (William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part Two, Act IV, Scene 2, from the journals of May Dodd)

even if it meant early release of a few low-level felons or minor mental defectives

Good-bye, Harry, wherever you may be … never has it been more clear to me that the part of my life which you occupied is over forever … I could not be further away from you if I were on the moon … how odd to think of one's life not as chapters in a book but as complete volumes, separate and distinct.