Fathers, fathers, fathers, hear me well. Call back your young men from the mountains of the bighorn sheep. They have run over our country; they have destroyed the growing wood and the green grass; they have set fire to our lands. Fathers, your young men have devastated the country and killed my animals, the elk, the deer, the antelope, my buffalo. They do not kill them to eat them; they leave them to rot where they fall. Fathers, if I went into your country to kill your animals, what would you say? Should I not be wrong, and would you not make war on me?
– Bear Tooth
The Crow chief attacks the wanton destruction of the environment and wildlife by his enemy. He is speaking here to the government’s peace commissioners at Fort Laramie. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown.
