Sewell Fitzhugh Quotes
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.
Sewell Fitzhugh, Chief, Nause-Waiwash Indian Tribe, Statement on the 400th anniversary of Captain John Smith’s Exploration of the Chesapeake Bay, Quoted in Terence Smith, “Beyond Jamestown”, Smithsonian, May 2007
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This is an important quotations for two reasons. First, one of the white Europan myths in the colonial era was that the Native America had not concept of land ownership and title. This quotation clearly refutes that/ Second, this shows that some Europeans coming to the new world opposed the view that the white Christians and a moral right to the Native American “heathen” land. A few like Williams did not.
Published 100 years after it was written. This is the first known written statement of what became a de facto policy regarding the American Indian.
Wayne played so many parts depicting whites in the process of expanding Westward that many people saw him as an expert on the history of the Westward Expansion. He did not comment on the whites who then kept huge ranches “selfishly” for themselves or those who selfishly would not share the mineral rich land that they had taken with anyone including the original Indian owners. So in this view, the Indians should have not been capitalists but they should have been socialists and shared their resources.
Justification for policy of settling all Indians west of the Mississippi River.
The line, like many in good poetry, has several levels of meaning. The most obvious is that we had explored and conquered the land, before we became a nation.
