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.
SITTING BULLNow that we are poor, we are free. No white man controls our footsteps.
More Sitting Bull Quotes
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Now that we are poor, we are free. No white man controls our footsteps.
SITTING BULL -
Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love!
SITTING BULL -
I was very sorry when I found out that your intentions were good and not what I supposed they were.
SITTING BULL -
Therefore, I do not wish to consider any proposition to cede any portion of our tribal holdings to the Great Father.
SITTING BULL -
They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse.
SITTING BULL -
I have killed, robbed, and injured too many white men to believe in a good peace. They are medicine, and I would eventually die a lingering death. I had rather die on the field of battle.
SITTING BULL -
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.
SITTING BULL -
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?
SITTING BULL -
You come here to tell us lies, but we don’t want to hear them. If we told you more, you would have paid no attention. That is all I have to say.
SITTING BULL -
God made me an Indian, but not a reservation Indian.
SITTING BULL -
First kill me before you take possession of my Fatherland.
SITTING BULL -
It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even to our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves to inhabit this vast land.
SITTING BULL -
The life my people want is a life of freedom. I have seen nothing that a white man has, houses or railways or clothing or food, that is as good as the right to move in the open country and live in our fashion.
SITTING BULL -
If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans, and in my heart he put other and different desires. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.
SITTING BULL -
Our religion seems foolish to you, but so does yours to me. The Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians and the Catholics all have a different God. Why cannot we have one of our own?
SITTING BULL -
Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit.
SITTING BULL -
The meat of the buffalo tastes the same on both sides of the border.
SITTING BULL -
What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian.
SITTING BULL -
What treaty that the whites have kept has the red man broken? Not one.
SITTING BULL -
I know Great Spirit is looking down upon me from above, and will hear what I say.
SITTING BULL -
The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.
SITTING BULL -
I want to tell you that if the Great Spirit had chosen anyone to be the chief of this country, it is myself.
SITTING BULL -
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.
SITTING BULL -
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?
SITTING BULL -
A cold wind blew on the prairie on the day the last buffalo fell. A death wind for my people.
SITTING BULL -
If we must die, we die defending our rights.
SITTING BULL