John Rae Quotes

The Canadians have managed to live peacefully with their Indians. It is disgrace that the United States has not done the same.

All preceding experiments for the improvement of the Indians have failed. It seems now to be an established fact that they cannot live in contact with a civilized community and prosper.

[We must defend ourselves] against all Indians in generall, for that they are all Enemies

Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves of the danger of foreign settlement.

Civilization or death to all American savages!

This present race of Indians will never be converted. It mattereth not whether they kill one another off or if somebody else does it. And as for our sending missionaries among them to convert them, it is of no use

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.

I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. … I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other.

They [Native Americans] should not be allowed to come into the settlements, for every visit an Indian makes to a town, it is more or less injury to him.

In the end, there is no absence of irony: the integrity of what is sacred to Native Americans will be determined by the government that has been responsible for doing everything in its power to destroy Native American cultures.

The Americans will never solve the Indian problem till the Indian is extinct. They have treated them after a fashion which has intensified their treachery and 'devilry' as enemies, and as friends reduces them to a degraded pauperism, devoid of the very first elements of civilization.

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

If Pocahontas had been given the foresight to see what devastating consequences her actions and belief in the possibility of peace would have brought upon her people, I wonder if she would have avoided befriending the English or not.

The native American has been generally despised by his white conquerors for his poverty and simplicity.

You say, for example, “Why do the Indians till the ground and live as we do?” May we not ask with equal propriety, “Why do not the white people hunt and live as we do?”

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.

White domination is so complete that even American Indian children want to be cowboys. It's as if Jewish children wanted to play Nazis.

I hope to God you will not ask me to go to any other country except my own. It may turn out to be another Bosque Redondo.

It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power of the states; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the government and through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community …. To save him from this alternative, or perhaps utter annihilation, the general government kindly offers him a new home, and proposes to pay the whole expense of his removal and settlement.

They [the American Indians] have claims on the magnanimity and, I may add, on the justice of this nation which we must all fill. We should become their real benefactors; we should perform the office of their Great Father, the endearing title which they emphatically give to the Chief Magistrate of our Union.

They are like any other class of people. They like to defend their rights. I think the Indians have been more sinned against than they have sinned.

In the past 190 years, the U.S. government has tried every possible way to get rid of the troublesome Indian problem he feels he has on his hands. First the government tried extinction through destruction – where money was paid for the scalps of every dead Indian. Then the government tried mass relocation… Then the government tried assimilation… The termination was tried by issuing forced patents in fee to Indian land owners – land was taken out of the trust relationship with the U.S. government and an unrestricted patent in fee was issued to the Indian whether he wanted it or not or whether he understood it or not.

The Indian race has reached a crisis in its history.

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

No one who knew the true nature of the Indian felt any regret that they were driven off their hunting grounds. This attitude was found wherever the Whites came in conflict with them and explains why they were scarcely regarded as human beings.