Red Cloud Quotes

A Century of Dishonor

The Indians were the original occupants of the lands we now posses. They have been driven from place to place ... In many instances, when they had settled down upon lands assigned to them by compact and begun to support themselves by their own labor, they were rudely jostled off and thrust into the wilderness again. Many, if not most, of our Indian wars have had their origin in broken promises and acts of injustice on our part.

The Cherokees tried to do everything within the law and wished only to live in peace on their own lands. Yet they were cheated out of their birthright and treated as if they were less than human.

When they laid down their arms, we murdered them. We lied to them. We cheated them out of their lands. We starved them into signing fraudulent agreements that we called treaties which we never kept. We turned them into beggars on a continent that gave life for as long as life can remember. And by any interpretation of history, however twisted, we did not do right. We were not lawful nor were we just in what we did. For them, we do not have to restore these people, we do not have to live up to some agreements, because it is given to us by virtue of our power to attack the rights of others, to take their property, to take their lives when they are trying to defend their land and liberty, and to make their virtues a crime and our own vices virtues.

Flags were given to my people, and they were told they were now the children of the Americans. We were told, if any white people mean to harm you, hold up these flags and you will then be safe from all danger. We did this in good faith. But what happened? Our beloved chief Moluntha stood with the American flag in front of him and that very peace treaty in his hand, but his head was chopped by a American officer, and that American officer was never punished. Brother, after such bitter events, can you blame me for placing little confidence in the promises of Americans?

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?

As to the Indians, the guiding principle was, promise them anything just so long as they get out of the way.

I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.

This land was our land; it was taken from us illegally …. John Smith did not bring a civilization here. There was already civilization here…. We should have burned the boat and killed them. all.

Coercion alone will remove them [the Indians] to the western country allotted for the Indians.

We have crowded the tribes upon a few miserable acres on our Southern frontier; it is all that is left to them of their once boundless forest: and still, like the horse-leech, our insatiated cupidity cries, Give! Give! ... Do the obligations of justice change with the color of the skin?

A people once numerous, powerful, and truly independent, found by our ancestors in the quiet and uncontrolled possession of an ample domain, gradually sinking beneath our superior policy, our arts, and our arms, have yielded their lands by successive treaties, each of which contains a solemn guarantee of the residue, until they retain no more of their formerly extensive territory than is deemed necessary for their comfortable subsistence.

I once thought that I was the only man who persevered to be the friend of the white man, but since they have come and cleaned out our lodges, horses, and everything else, it is hard for me to believe the white man anymore.

By the latter part of the last century, the Indians finally realized that … treaties were real-estate deals designed to separate them from their lands.

Why does not the Great Father put his red children on wheels, so he can move them as he will?

If we had but one square mile left, they [the whites of Georgia] would not be satisfied unless they could get it.

Indigenous peoples was messed over. It was like a tradition here. We broke every treaty with them that ever was written. I think Andrew Jackson wanted to wipe them out.

It is presumed that humanity dictated the original policy of the removal and concentration of the Indians in the West to save them from threatened extinction. But today, by reason of the immense augmentation of the American population, and the extension of their settlements throughout the entire West, covering both slopes of the Rocky Mountains, the Indian races are more seriously threatened with a speedy extermination than ever before in the history of the country

This war was brought upon us by the children of the Great Father who came to take our land from us without price.

We have looked back, and remembered how the Yorkers purchased our lands in former times. They bought them, piece after piece – for a little money paid to a few men in our nation, and not all our brethren – until our planting and hunting grounds have become very small, and if we sell them, we know not where to spread our blankets.

Tyranny, Stupidity, and lack of vision have brought about the situation now alluded to as the Indian problem.

If you have got to wear golden slippers to enter the white man's heaven no Indian will ever get there, as the whites have got the Black Hills and with them all the gold.

Civilization or death to all American savages!

White men come in like a river. They told us that they only wanted a little land. But we knew better.

Brothers, the white men are not friends to the Indians: at first, they only asked for land sufficient for a wigwam; now, nothing will satisfy them but the whole of our hunting grounds, from the rising to the setting sun. Brothers, the white men want more than our hunting grounds; they wish to kill our old men, women, and little ones.