Sitting Bull Quotes - Page 2

What white man can say I never stole his land or a penny of his money? Yet they say that I am a thief.

A cold wind blew on the prairie on the day the last buffalo fell. A death wind for my people.

Only seven years ago we made a treaty by which we were assured that the buffalo country should be left to us forever. Now they threaten to take that from us also.

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?

Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows. Now we are poor but we are free. No white man controls our footsteps. If we must die, we die defending our rights.

I know Great Spirit is looking down upon me from above, and will hear what I say.

If I agree to dispose of any part of our land to the white people I would feel guilty of taking food away from our children's mouths, and I do not wish to be that mean.

Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am Sioux? Because I was born where my father lived? Because I would die for my people and my country?

I hardly sustain myself beneath the weight of white men's blood that I have shed. The whites provoked the war; their injustices, their indignities to our families, the cruel, unheard of and wholly unprovoked massacre at Fort Lyon ... shook all the veins which bind and support me. I rose, tomahawk in hand, and I have done all the hurt to the whites that I could.

I will remain what I am until I die, a hunter, and when there are no buffalo or other game I will send my children to hunt and live on prairie, for where an Indian is shut up in one place his body becomes weak.

God made me an Indian.

This is a good day to die. Follow me!

In my early days, I was eager to learn and to do things, and therefore I learned quickly.

What white man has ever seen me drunk? Who has ever come to me hungry and left me unfed? Who has seen me beat my wives or abuse my children? What law have I broken?

Every seed is awakened, and all animal life.

You think I am a fool, but you are a greater fool than I am.

I was very sorry when I found out that your intentions were good and not what I supposed they were.

Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit.

I do not wish to be shut up in a corral. All agency Indians I have seen are worthless. They are neither red warriors nor white farmers. They are neither wolf nor dog.

Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possessions is a disease in them.

Now that we are poor, we are free. No white man controls our footsteps.

What treaty that the whites have kept has the red man broken? Not one.

This nation is like a spring freshet; it overruns its banks and destroys all who are in its path.

I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place.

The meat of the buffalo tastes the same on both sides of the border.