Menu

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Red Cloud Quotes

You must begin anew and put away the wisdom of your fathers. You must lay up food and forget the hungry. When your house is built, your storeroom filled, then look around for a neighbor whom you can take advantage of and seize all he has.

– Red Cloud

Oglala Lakota chief, when told that he must become as the white man. God is Red: A Native View of Religion, by Vine Deloria.

Friends, it has been our misfortune to welcome the white man. We have been deceived. He brought with him some shining things that pleased our eyes; he brought weapons more effective than our own. Above all he brought the spirit-water that makes one forget old age, weakness and sorrow.

– Red Cloud

Oglala Lakota chief. Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains, by Charles A. Eastman.

Those Indians who go over to the white man can be nothing but beggars, for he respects only riches, and how can an Indian be a rich man? He cannot without ceasing to be an Indian. As for me, I have listened patiently to the promises of the Great Father, but his memory is short. I am now done with him. This is all I have to say.

– Red Cloud

Oglala Lakota chief. Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains, by Charles A. Eastman.

My countrymen, shall the glittering trinkets of this rich man, his deceitful drink that overcomes the mind, shall these things tempt us to give up our homes, our hunting grounds, and the honorable teaching of our old men? Shall we permit ourselves to be driven to and fro – to be herded like the cattle of the white man?

– Red Cloud

Oglala Lakota chief. Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains, by Charles A. Eastman.

We do not want riches. We want peace and love - Red Cloud

In Peace And Love

We do not want riches. We want peace and love.

– Red Cloud

Speech at Cooper Institute, New York, 1870.

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. - Red Cloud

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.

– Red Cloud

A saddened Oglala Sioux chief, after years of dealing with the whites. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown.

The whites, who are civilized and educated, swindle me; and I am not hard to swindle, because I do not know how to read and write.

– Red Cloud

Meeting with government officials in Washington, 1870.

The white man has got the gold out of the land which belonged to the red man.

– Red Cloud

Speech to Secretary of the Interior Jacob Cox, Washington, 1870.

Even if you live forty or fifty years in this world, and then die, you cannot take all your goods with you.

– Red Cloud

To Secretary of the Interior Jacob Cox, during 1870 Washington visit.

The Great Spirit will not make me suffer because I am ignorant. He will put me in a place where I shall be better off than in this world.

– Red Cloud

To Secretary of the Interior Jacob Cox, Washington, 1870.

In 1868, men came out and brought papers. We could not read them and they did not tell us truly what was in them. We thought the treaty was to remove the forts and for us to cease from fighting…When I reached Washington, the Great Father explained to me that the interpreters had deceived me. All I want is right and just.

– Red Cloud

Speech at Cooper Institute, New York, 1870.

When we first had this land we were strong, now are melting like snow on the hillside, while you are grown like spring grass.

– Red Cloud

Message to U.S. President Grant, spoken to Secretary of the Interior Jacob Cox.

The Great Spirit raised both the white man and the Indian. I think he raised the Indian first. He raised me in this land, 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.

– Red Cloud

To council meeting at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, June 12, 1871.

All the promises made in the treaty have never been fulfilled. The object of the whites is to crush the Indians down to nothing.

– Red Cloud

To Secretary of the Interior Jacob Cox, 1870.

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.

– Red Cloud

To council meeting at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, June 12, 1871.

We were told that they wished merely to pass through our country…to seek for gold in the far west…Yet before the ashes of the council are cold, the Great Father is building his forts among us…His presence here is…an insult to the spirits of our ancestors. Are we then to give up their sacred graves to be plowed for corn? Dakotas, I am for war.

– Red Cloud

Speech to fellow Indians before attack on Fort Phil Kearny, 1866.

You whites make all the ammunition.

– Red Cloud

To Commissioner of Indian Affairs Ely S. Parker in Washington, 1870.

I was a warrior on this land where the sun rises, now I come from where the sun sets. Whose voice was first surrounded on this land – the red people with bows and arrows. The Great Father says he is good and kind to us. I can’t see it.

– Red Cloud

Speech to Secretary of the Interior Jacob Cox, Washington, 1870.

I hope the Great Heavenly Father, who will look down upon us, will give all the tribes his blessing, that we may go forth in peace, and live in peace all our days, and that He will look down upon our children and finally lift us far above this earth.

– Red Cloud

To Chief Plenty Coups, leader of the Crow nation.

When I was a young man, I was poor. In a war with other nations, I was in eighty-seven fights. There I received my name and was made Chief of my nation. But now I am old and am for peace.

– Red Cloud

Speech to Secretary of the Interior Jacob Cox, Washington, 1870.

I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches, but we want to train our children right. Riches will do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.

– Red Cloud

Speech at Cooper Institute, New York, 1870.

I have come a long distance to my Great Father’s house – see if I have left any blood in his land when I go. When the white man comes in my country he leaves a trail of blood behind him.

– Red Cloud

On visit to Washington to U.S. President Grant and officials, 1870.

The whites are the same everywhere. I see them every day.

– Red Cloud

Speech to Secretary of the Interior Jacob Cox, Washington, 1870.

You who eat three times a day and see your children well and happy around you cannot understand what a starving Indian feels! We were faint with hunger and maddened by despair. We held our dying children and felt their little bodies tremble as their soul went out and left only a dead weight in our hands.

– Red Cloud

Speech after massacre at Wounded Knee, where 150-300 Lakota Sioux were killed by U.S. soldiers on December 29, 1890.

Our children are dying off like sheep; the country does not suit them.

– Red Cloud

To Secretary of the Interior Jacob Cox, about Lakota reservation on Missouri, 1870.

I was born a Lakota and I shall die a Lakota. Before the white man came to our country, the Lakotas were a free people. They made their own laws and governed themselves as it seemed good to them. The priests and ministers tell us that we lived wickedly when we lived before the white man came among us. Whose fault was this? We lived right as we were taught it was right. Shall we be punished for this? I am not sure that what these people tell me is true.

– Red Cloud

Farewell speech to Lakota people, July 4, 1903.

When you buy anything with my money, I want you to buy me what is useful. I do not want city flour, rotten tobacco, and soldiers’ old clothes dyed black.

– Red Cloud

To Secretary of the Interior Jacob Cox

Taku Shanskan is familiar with my spirit and when I die I will go with him. Then I will be with my forefathers. If this is not in the heaven of the white man I shall be satisfied. Wi is my father. The Wakan Tanka of the white man has overcome him. But I shall remain true to him.

– Red Cloud

Farewell to Lakota people, July 4, 1903.

Shadows are long and dark before me. I shall soon lie down to rise no more. While my spirit is with my body the smoke of my breath shall be towards the Sun for he knows all things and knows that I am still true to him.

– Red Cloud

Farewell to Lakota people, July 4, 1903.

As a child I was taught the Taku Wakan (Supernatural Powers) were powerful and could do strange things. This was taught me by the wise men and the shamans. They taught me that I could gain their favor by being kind to my people and brave before my enemies; by telling the truth and living straight; by fighting for my people and their hunting grounds.

– Red Cloud

Farewell to Lakota people, July 4, 1903.

- 1
- 2