These Indians are fierce, they wear feathers and grunt. Most of us dont fit this idealized figure since we grunt only when overeating — Vine Deloria Jr.
I have asked some of the great white chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please. They cannot tell me. — Chief Joseph
I do not believe that the Great Spirit Chief gave one kind of men the right to tell another kind of men what they must do. — Chief Joseph
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
Our chiefs are killed. . . . The little children are freezing to death. . . . My people have no blankets, no food. . . . My heart is sick and sad. . . . I will fight no more forever. — Chief Joseph
The Indian Summer, the dead Summer's soul. — Mary C. Ames
An Indian is an Indian regardless of the degree of Indian blood or which little government card they do or do not possess. — Wilma Mankiller
When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world. The sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them? — Sitting Bull
Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit. — Sitting Bull
Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian. — Henry Ford
There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry. — George Armstrong Custer
Indian Tribes Quotes
It is essential to our interest and the security of our colonies that the several nations or tribes of Indians... who live under our protection, should not be molested or disturbed. — George III
"I used to think the world was broken down by tribes," I said. "By black and white. By Indian and white. But I know that isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not." — Sherman Alexie
Infectious diseases introduced with Europeans, like smallpox and measles, spread from one Indian tribe to another, far in advance of Europeans themselves, and killed an estimated 95% of the New World's Indian population. — Jared Diamond
Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.
Children must early learn the the beauty of generosity. They are taught to give what they prize most, that they may taste the happiness of giving. — Charles Alexander Eastman
Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. — Tecumseh
I'm so sick and tired of hearing about slavery. You think slavery didn't exist in Africa? Even Indian tribes. — David Duke
The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them - especially not from yourself.
No contact with savage Indian tribes has ever daunted me more than the morning I spent with an old lady swathed in woolies who compared herself to a rotten herring encased in a block of ice. — Claude Levi-Strauss
Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man ... cannot be exempt from the common destiny. — Chief Seattle
From several of the Indian tribes inhabiting the country bordering on Lake Erie purchases have been made of lands on conditions very favorable to the United States, and, as it is presumed, not less so to the tribes themselves. — James Monroe
[last words] What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. — Crowfoot
Great Native American Quotes
I salute the light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am at that place within me, we shall be one. — Crazy Horse
If you talk to the animals they will talk with you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them you will not know them and what you do not know, you will fear. What one fears, one destroys. — Chief Dan George
At the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit. And that center is really everywhere. It is within each of us. — Black Elk
We do not want churches because they will teach us to quarrel about God. We do not want to learn that. We may quarrel with men sometimes about things on this earth, but we never quarrel about the Great Spirit. We do not want to learn that. — Chief Joseph
Where no one intrudes, many can live in harmony. — Chief Dan George
How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right. — Black Hawk
There is no death, only a change of worlds. — Chief Seattle
Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles. — Black Elk
The voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers. — Zitkala-Sa
My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon. So long as they occupy and cultivate it, they have a right to the soil. Nothing can be sold but such things as can be carried away — Black Hawk
American Indian Quotes
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. — Crazy Horse
I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole earth will become One Circle again. — Crazy Horse
We’re not Indians and we’re not Native Americans. We’re older than both concepts. We’re the people, we’re the human beings. — John Trudell
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children — Chief Seattle
Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. Its five hundred years later and they still cant see us. We are still invisible. — John Trudell
I am tired of talk that comes to nothing It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises. There has been too much talking by men who had no right to talk. It does not require many words to speak the truth. — Chief Joseph
Wisdom and peace come when you start living the life the creator intended for you. — Geronimo
Above all, I wanted to be appreciated as a prima ballerina who happened to be a Native American, never as someone who was an American Indian ballerina. — Maria Tallchief
One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk. — Crazy Horse
Now, of course, the great thing about the solar system as a frontier is that there are no Indians, so you can have all the glory of the myth of the American westward expansion without any of the guilt. — Sarah Zettel
Native American Indian Quotes
Don't let yesterday use up too much of today. — Will Rogers
Brothers, we must be united; we must smoke the same pipe; we must fight each other's battles; and more than all, we must love the Great Spirit. — Tecumseh
The land is sacred. These words are at the core of your being. The land is our mother, the rivers our blood. Take our land away and we die. That is, the Indian in us dies. — Mary Brave Bird
Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library. — Luther Standing Bear
We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth as wild. Earth was beautiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. — Luther Standing Bear
Native Americans had only stone and wooden weapons and no animals that could be ridden. Those military advantages repeatedly enabled troops of a few dozen mounted Spaniards to defeat Indian armies numbering in the thousands. — Jared Diamond
If a man loses anything and goes back and looks carefully for it, he will find it. — Sitting Bull
Old age is not as honorable as death, but most people seek it. — David Gemmell
Sing your death song and die like a hero going home. — Tecumseh
Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians! [...] I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians. — John Chivington
Native American Quotes
If you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you'll learn things you never knew you never knew. — Pocahontas
Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South, I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native State? — Robert E. Lee
May the stars carry your sadness away, may the flowers fill your heart with beauty, may hope forever wipe away your tears. And, above all, may silence make you strong. — Chief Dan George
Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself — and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty. — Chief Joseph
Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot exist without fairness, fairness cannot exist without development, development cannot exist without democracy, democracy cannot exist without respect for the identity and worth of cultures and peoples. — Rigoberta Menchu
There is a direct connection between violence against the Earth and violence against women. — Lee Maracle
Earth does not belong to us; we belong to earth. Take only memories, leave nothing but footprints. — Chief Seattle
The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. — Chief Seattle
Cows run away from the storm while the buffalo charges toward it - and gets through it quicker. Whenever I’m confronted with a tough challenge, I do not prolong the torment, I become the buffalo. — Wilma Mankiller
Someone needs to explain to me why wanting clean drinking water makes you an activist, and why proposing to destroy water with chemical warfare doesnt make a corporation a terrorist. — Winona LaDuke
We were contented to let things remain as the Great Spirit Chief made them. They were not; and would change the rivers and mountains if they did not suit them. — Chief Joseph
This generation of little children is the 7th Generation. Not just Indian children but white, black, yellow and red. Our grandfathers said the 7th generation would provide new spiritual leaders, medicine people, doctors, teachers and our great chiefs. There is a spiritual rebirth going on. — Clyde Bellecourt
The major adventure is to claim your authentic, true being, which is not culturally given to you. The culture will not explain to you how to be a real human being. It will tell you how to be banker, politician, Indian chief, masseuses, actress, whatever, but it will not give you true being. — Terence McKenna
I got a great grandma. Her name is Pearl, and she was at one time married to an Indian chief, who, in a wonderful crossing of cultures, she integrated some of his, and some of hers, and um,
it was a combination of peyote and preserves, and it was this hallucinogenic jam. — Eddie Vedder
Sixty percent of the vegetables you see in the supermarkets came from the American Indians. They also gave us aspirin and quinine. And their model of government parallels our Senate. But their women elected the chiefs, and impeached them. — Harry Dean Stanton
I doubt very much if a man whose main literary interests were in works by Mr. Zane Grey, admirable as they may be, is particularly equipped to be the chief executive of this country, particularly where Indian Affairs are concerned. — Dean Acheson
You cannot have all chiefs; you gotta have Indians too. — Proverbs
You cannot have all chiefs; you gotta have Indians too.
Perfect love cannot be without equality.
A friend to everybody and to nobody is the same thing.
We are all alike, on the inside. — Mark Twain
Words alone are inadequate to express spiritual realities. This book expresses the Red Indian spirit because it combines the best photographs ever taken of the old-time chiefs with some of their best words. You can meet these old-timers and share their wisdom. People who read this book will better understand our sacred ways. — Thomas Yellowtail
Chief Seattle, of the Indians that inhabited the Seattle area, wrote a wonderful paper that has to do with putting oneself in tune with the universe. He said, — Joseph Campbell
When once an Indian sees that his food is secure, he does not care what the chief or any one else says. — George Crook
I have spoken to many, many Indian chiefs who say they have no objection whatsoever to the nickname. — Jack K. Cooke
I fantasize about everything; being a fireman, an Indian chief, climbing mountains. Anything is possible. — Ted Turner
Buddha is the crown jewel of the Indian nation which accepts all ways of worship of all religions. This quality of Hinduism in India was a product of many great spiritual masters chief among them was Buddha. And this is what sustains the secular character of India. — Narendra Modi
A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter, quite in the described mode,--the Indians, as usual, having the advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white man's treatment of them, and probably have reason to be so. — Henry David Thoreau
I always wanted to be a fireman, a cop, an Indian chief, a doctor, a lawyer. I always wanted to be all these things, so I am drawn to these kinds of characters. — Morgan Freeman
I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother's side was not an Indian chief. — Zora Neale Hurston
In the unexamined American Dream rhetoric promoting mass higher education in the nation of my youth, the implicit vision was that one day everyone, or at least practically everyone, would be a manager or a professional. We would use the most elitist of all means, scholarship, toward the most egalitarian of ends. We would all become chiefs; hardly anyone would be left a mere Indian. — William A. Henry III
The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds-the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveler, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its other horrors. — Nathaniel Hawthorne
Among our neighbors of Central and Southern America, we see the Caucasian mingled with the Indian and the African. They have the forms of free government, because they have copied them. To
its benefits they have not attained, because that standard of civilization is above their race. Revolution succeeds Revolution, and the country mourns that some petty chief may triumph, and
through a sixty days' government ape the rulers of the earth. — Jefferson Davis
I think the worst one [indian mascot] is the Cleveland Indians' Big Chief Wahoo. It's just a red face on a baseball with a big, toothy grin. It's the Sambo of all other offensive mascots. I have never seen a Native American smile that hard before, not even at a casino opening. — Wanda Sykes
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