American Indian Quotes

120 American Indian Quotes

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One of the finest things about being an Indian is that people are always interested in you and your “plight.” Other groups have difficulties, predicaments, quandaries, problems, or troubles. Traditionally we Indians have had a “plight.”
Vine Deloria Jr

One day at a conference we were singing “My Country Tis of Thee” and we came across the part that goes: And where our fathers died Land of the Pilgrims’ pride… Some of us broke out laughing when we realized that our fathers undoubtedly died trying to keep those pilgrims from stealing our land.
Vine Deloria Jr

It has been said of missionaries that when they arrived they had only the Book and we had the land; now we have the Book and they have the land.
Vine Deloria Jr

Tonto (the “faithful Indian companion” of the Lone Ranger) was everything that the white man had always wanted the Indian to be. He was a little slower, a little dumber, had much less vocabulary, and rode a darker horse.
Vine Deloria Jr

Somehow tonto was always there. Like the Negro butler and the Oriental gardener. Tonto represented a silent, subservient subspecies of Anglo-Saxon whose duty was to do the bidding of the all-wise white hero.
Vine Deloria Jr

It just seems to a lot of Indians that this continent was a lot better off when we were running it.
Vine Deloria Jr

He (a non-Indian) said that he was really sorry about what had happened to Indians, but that there was good reason for it. The continent had to be developed and he felt that Indians had stood in the way and thus had had to be removed. “After all,” he remarked, “what did you do to the land when you had it?” I didn’t understand him until later when I discovered that the Cuyahoga River running through Cleveland is inflammable….How many Indians could have thought of creating an inflammable river?
Vine Deloria Jr

The typical white attitude is that Indians can have land as long as whites have no use of it.
Vine Deloria Jr

With the distribution of funds (if allocated to individual Indians rather than to the tribe as a whole), will come the drug dealers, bootleggers, used car dealers, and appliance salesmen who would normally cross the street to avoid saying hello to an Indian. One great spasm of spending will occur and then the people, as poor as they ever were, will return to normal lives.
Vine Deloria Jr

American Indians seem an enigma to most other Americans. The images portrayed in the movies, whether of noble red man or blood-thirsty savage, recall the stereotypes of western history. Newspaper stories dealing with oil wells, uranium mines, land claims, and the occupation of public buildings and reservation hamlets almost seem to speak of another group altogether and it is difficult to connect the two perceptions of Indians in any single and comprehensible reality.
Vine Deloria Jr



Literature on Indians provides on clues to understanding the present or remembering the past. Much contemporary literature is a thinly disguised romanticism that looks at Indians as the last and best spiritual hope for a society disheartened and disorganized.
Vine Deloria Jr

The protections of the Bill of Right, available to all other Americans, have not been available for American Indians. Not only have the federal courts studiously avoided considering the application of these protections, but Congress and the executive branch have frequently acted as if there were no limitation whatsoever in their power to deal with Indians, and the courts have deferred to this assertion of naked authority.
Vine Deloria Jr

In 1968, the American Indian Civil Rights Act…was passed, but this act only served to extend some Bill of Rights protection to tribal members in their relationship with Indian governments. Nothing was authorized that would protect American Indian nations or individuals against the arbitrary actions of the Federal government, protection that both states and individuals enjoy.
Vine Deloria Jr

Hear ye, Dakatos! When the Great Father at Washington (the President)sent us his chief soldier to ask for a path through our hunting grounds, a way for his iron road to the mountains and the western sea, we were told that they wished merely to pass through our country, not to tarry among us, but to seek for gold in the far west. Our old chiefs thought to show their friendship and good will, when they allowed this dangerous snake in our midst.
Red Cloud

Yet before the ashes of the council fire are cold, the Great Father is building his forts among us. You have heard the sound of the white soldier’s axe upon the Little Piney. His presence here is an insult and a threat. It 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

When we see the soldiers moving away and the forts abandoned, then I will come down and talk.
Red Cloud

Our nation is melting away like the snow on the sides of the hills where the sun is warm, while your people (whites) are like blades of grass in the spring when summer is coming.
Red Cloud

The Great Spirit made us poor and ignorant. He made you (whites) rich and wise and skilful in things which we know nothing about.
Red Cloud

We do not want riches, we want peace and love.
Red Cloud

We see a great many soldiers here in our country. We know that the duty of these soldiers is to follow people that are bad throughout the western country. We do not like to see them here. I want you to have pity on us, and have them all taken away, and leave us alone here with the agent of the interior department.
Red Cloud



When the white man comes to my country he leaves a trail of blood behind him.
Red Cloud

My sun is set. My day is done. Darkness is stealing over me.
Red Cloud

The Great Spirit made us, the Indians, and gave us this land we live in. He gave us the buffalo, the antelope, and the deer for food and clothing. We moved on our hunting grounds from the Minnesota to the Platte and from the Mississippi to the great mountains. No one put bounds on us. We were free as the winds and eagle.
Red Cloud

I was born Lakota and I have lived as a Lakota and I shall die a Lakota.
Red Cloud

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

They (the whites) made us many promises, more than I can remember…. They never kept but on. They promised to take our land, and they took it!
Red Cloud

There is a time coming…when many things will change. Strangers called Earth Men will appear among you. Their skins are light-colored, and their ways are powerful. They speak no Indian tongue. Follow nothing that these Earth Men do, but keep your own ways that I have taught you as long as you can.
Sweet Medicine

I, therefore, exhort you to peaceable counsels, and, above all, I insist the guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy and uneasiness, be removed and sent away.
Powhatan

It matters little where we pass the remnant of our days. They will not be many. The Indian’s night promises to be dark…a few more moments…a few more winters.
Chief Seattle

As to what you told us of the Owenagungas (Abenakis) and Uragees (Mahicans), we answer that we were never so proud and haughty, as to begin a war without just provocation. You tell us that they are treacherous rogues-we believe it-and that they will undoubtedly assist the French. If they shall do this, or shall join with any of our enemies, either French or Indians, then we shall kill and destroy them.
Tahajadoris



All their chiefs and all their warriors have made themselves as one man, and formed their hands to our peace, and promise never to break it, but to hold the peace belt fast.
Teedyuscung

We are, however, not the less obliged by your kind offer, tho’ we decline accepting it; and, to show our grateful Sense of it, if the Gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take Care of their Education, instruct them in all we know, and make Men of them.
Conassatego

We do not quarrel with you for the killing of an occasional buffalo or deer in our lands, but….it is very criminal in our young men if they chance to kill a cow or a hog for their sustenance when they happen to be in your lands.
Old Tassel

It is surprising that when we enter into treaties with our fathers the white people, their whole cry is more land. Indeed it has seemed a formality with them to demand what they know we dare not refuse.
Old Tassel

I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan’s cabin hungry and I gave him not meat, if ever he came cold or naked and I gave him not clothing.
Logan

Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one.
Logan

Whole nations have melted away like balls of snow before the sun.
Dragging-canoe

When the whites are unable to point out any farther retreat for the miserable Cherokees, they will proclaim the extinction of the whole race.
Dragging-canoe

In former days when you were young and weak, I used to call you brother, but now I call you father.
Cornplanter

Think well of it. There is something that whispers to me, it would be prudent to listen to his (Anthony Wayne’s) offers of peace.
Little Turtle



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