"I did not know how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died here in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream...the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."

~ Black Elk~

"Tell General Howard I know his Heart. What He told me before I have in my heart. I am tired of fighting, Looking Glass is dead. too-Hul-hul-sote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold and we have no blankets. 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--perhpas freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."

Chief Joseph's Surrender Speech at Bears Paw Battle
October 5, 1877

 

 

" . . . We took away their country and their means of support, broke up their mode of living, their habits of life, introduced disease and decay among them, and it was for this and against this that they made war.  Could anyone expect less?"

William T. Sherman, Commanding General,
United States Army, 1878

 

 

"Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children."

Ancient Indian Proverb

 

 

"The American Indian is of the soil, whether it be the region of forests, plains, pueblos, or mesas. He fits into the landscape, for the hand that fashioned the continent also fashioned the man for his surroundings. He once grew as naturally as the wild sunflowers, he belongs just as the buffalo belonged...."

~Luther Standing Bear~       Oglala Sioux

 

 

"Out of the Indian approach to life there came a great freedom, an intense and absorbing respect for life, enriching faith in a Supreme Power, and principles of truth, honesty, generosity, equity, and brotherhood as a guide to mundane relations."

~Luther Standing Bear~       Oglala Sioux

 

 

"What is life?  It is the flash of a firefly in the night.  It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.  It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."

~Crowfoot,  Blackfoot warrior and orator

 

 

"The ground on which we stand is sacred ground. It is the blood of our ancestors."

~Chief Plenty Coups, Crow~

 

 

"How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right."

~Black Hawk, Sauk~

 

 

"We know our lands have now become more valuable. The white people think we do  not know their value; but we know that the land is everlasting, and the few goods we receive for it are soon worn out and gone."

~Canassatego~

 

 

"We must protect the forests for our children, grandchildren and children yet to be born. We must protect the forests for those who can't speak for themselves such as the birds, animals, fish and trees."

Qwatsinas (Hereditary Chief Edward Moody), Nuxalk Nation