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The Great Gatsby
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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Native American Quotes

We were becoming like them, hypocrites and liars, adulterers, lazy drones, all talkers, and no workers - Black Hawk

We were becoming like them, hypocrites and liars, adulterers, lazy drones, all talkers, and no workers.

– Black Hawk

On poisoning influence of whites on his people. Surrender speech at Fort Crawford in Wisconsin, 1832.

Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset.

– Chief Yellow Lark

Native American prayer, translated by the Lakota chief in 1887.

Skin color makes no difference…My skin is red, but my grandfather was a white man. But why should that matter? It is not the color of the skin that makes me good or bad.

– White Shield

Survival of the world depends on our sharing what we have, and working together. If we don’t the whole world will die. First the planet, and next the people.

– Frank Fools Crow

Learn how to withhold judgment. Learn to listen. Get in touch with your own inner self. Look at life with joy. Don't ever cry over something that cannot cry over you. - Cheewa James

Learn how to withhold judgment. Learn to listen. Get in touch with your own inner self. Look at life with joy. Don’t ever cry over something that cannot cry over you.

– Cheewa James

It is better to have less thunder in the mouth and more lightning in the hand.

– Apache proverb

Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark.

– Cheyenne proverb

Are not women and children more timid than men? The Cheyenne warriors are not afraid, but have you never heard of Sand Creek? Your soldiers look just like those who butchered the women and children there.

– Roman Nose (Woquini)

The Cheyenne warrior to U.S. Army General Winfield Scott Handock. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, by Dee Brown. Chapter 7.

We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home. You had yours. We did not interfere with you. We do not want your civilization! - Crazy Horse

In Native American

We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home. You had yours. We did not interfere with you. We do not want your civilization!

– Crazy Horse

To his friend, Major V. T. McGillycuddy, U.S. army surgeon.

Sometimes in the evening I sit, looking out on the big Missouri. The sun sets, and dusk steals over the water. In the shadows I seem again to see our Indian village, with smoke curling upward from the earth lodges, and in the river’s roar I hear the yells of warriors, and the laughter of little children as of old. It is but an old woman’s dream. Then I see but shadows and hear only the roar of the river, and tears come into my eyes. Our Indian life, I know, is gone forever.

– Buffalo Bird Woman

The Great Father’s young men are going to carry gold away from the hills. I expect they will fill a number of houses with it. In consideration of this I want my people to be provided for as long as they shall live.

– Two Bears

Sioux. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, by Dee Brown. Chapter 12.

Dreams gather quickly
like Spring crows,
and they scatter.

– Simon Ortiz

Returned From California, by the Pueblo poet.

True leadership is only possible when character is more important than authority.

– Joseph M. Marshall III

The Power of Four: Leadership Lessons of Crazy Horse. By Joseph Marshall III, Brule Lakota.

We should only think of beautiful things when we look at other people.

– Rolling Thunder

The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.

– Black Elk

The Oglala Lakota medicine man, quoted in – Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. By John G. Neihardt.

Music is a healing force – all living spirits sing.

– Joanne Shenandoah

We never did the white man any harm; we don’t intend to…We are willing to be friends with the white man…The buffalo are diminishing fast. The antelope, that were plenty a few years ago, they are now thin. When they shall all die we shall be hungry; we shall want something to eat, and we will be compelled to come into the fort. Your young men must not fire at us; whenever they see us they fire, and we fire on them.

– Tall Bull

Cheyenne Dog Soldiers chief, to U.S. Army General Winfield Scott Hancock. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, by Dee Brown. Chapter 7.

I should never have surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive - Geronimo

In Native American

I should never have surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive.

– Geronimo

Apache leader’s last words on his deathbed, with his nephew at this side.

If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.

– Tecumseh

Shawnee chief. Shawnee History, by Lee Sultzman.

Those who have one foot in the canoe, and one foot in the boat, are going to fall into the river.

– Tuscarora Indian proverb

To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak. - Hopi saying

In Native American

To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak.

– Hopi Indian saying

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.

It is less of a problem to be poor, than to be dishonest.

– Anishinabe Indian proverb

If it had not been for the massacre, there would have been a great many more people here now; but after that massacre who could have stood it? When I made peace with Lieutenant Whitman my heart was very big and happy. The people of Tucson and San Xavier must be crazy. They acted as though they had neither heads nor hearts … they must have a thirst for our blood…These Tucson people write for the papers and tell their own story. The Apaches have no one to tell their story.

– Eskiminzin

Aravaipa Apache chief. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, by Dee Brown. Chapter 9.

Every human longs for peace and love.

– Hiawatha

Onondaga and Mohawk

I do not think the measure of a civilization is how tall its buildings of concrete are but rather how well its people have learned to relate to their environment and fellow man. - Sun Bear

In Civilization

I do not think the measure of a civilization is how tall its buildings of concrete are but rather how well its people have learned to relate to their environment and fellow man.

– Sun Bear (Vincent LaDuke)

When a man does a piece of work which is admired by all we say that it is wonderful; but when we see the changes of day and night, the sun, the moon, and the stars in the sky, and the changing seasons upon the Earth, with their ripening fruits, anyone must realize that it is the work of someone more powerful than man.

– Chased-By-Bears

Walk lightly in the spring; Mother Earth is pregnant.

– Kiowa proverb

The Indian needs no writings; words that are true sink deep into his heart where they remain in silence. He never forgets them.

– Four Guns

Oglala Lakota chief

We are overwhelmed! Our hearts are sickened, our utterance is paralyzed, when we reflect on the condition in which we are placed, by the audacious practices of unprincipled men.

– John Ross

Cherokee chief in response to passage of 1835 Treaty of New Echota. Signed by U.S. and minority Cherokee political faction, the Treaty Party, it provided legal basis for Trail of Tears, the forcible removal of Cherokee Nation from Georgia. It also cost three men their lives.

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