“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?”

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

What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian.

As individual fingers we can easily be broken, but all together we make a mighty fist.

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

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.

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.

I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle.

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.

First kill me before you take possession of my Fatherland.

I want to tell you that if the Great Spirit had chosen anyone to be the chief of this country, it is myself.

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?

I have killed, robbed, and injured too many white men to believe in a good peace.

This is a good day to die. Follow me!

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.

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

It does not take many words to tell the truth.