Dee Brown Quotes & Sayings

Indians!" Sitting Bull shouted. "There are no Indians left but me! — Dee Brown

Quanah Parker. As the years went by he became a shrewd businessman, built a large house, and successfully managed his farm and ranch. He traveled all over the country, and went to Washington to ride in President Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural parade. — Dee Brown

The Navahos could forgive the Rope Thrower for fighting them as a soldier, for making prisoners of them, even for destroying their food supplies, but the one act they never forgave him for was cutting down their beloved peach trees. — Dee Brown

A short time later, near Gallina Springs, Graydon's scouting party came upon the Mescaleros again. What happened there is not clear, because no Mescalero survived the incident. — Dee Brown

You just don't give up. There have been times when everything seemed to conspire against getting a book done or printed, and I would feel like turning my back on the whole thing. But I came back and persisted. — Dee Brown

Treat all men alike ... give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who is born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. Let me be a free man ... free to travel ... free to stop ... free to work ... free to choose my own teachers ... free to follow the religion of my Fathers ... free to think and talk and act for myself. — Dee Brown

I've tried word processors, but I think I'm too old a dog to use one. — Dee Brown

Whatever comes easily to us we turn away from, but that which slips away from us we will pursue to the ends of the earth. — Dee Brown

I heard him call to the people not to be afraid, that the soldiers would not hurt them; then the troops opened fire from two sides of the camp. — Dee Brown

On the mainland of America, the Wampanoags of Massasoit and King Philip had vanished, along with the Chesapeakes, the Chickahominys, and the Potomacs of the great Powhatan confederacy. (Only Pocahontas was remembered.) Scattered or reduced to remnants were the Pequots, Montauks, Nanticokes. Machapungas, Catawbas, Cheraws, Miamis, Hurons, Eries, Mohawks, Senecas, and Mohegans. (Only Uncas was remembered.) Their musical names remained forever fixed on the American land, but their bones were forgotten in a thousand burned villages or lost in forests fast disappearing before the axes of twenty million invaders. Already the once sweet-watered streams, most of which bore Indian names, were clouded with silt and the wastes of man; the very earth was being ravaged and squandered. To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature - the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy glades, the water, the soil, and the air itself. — Dee Brown

The Aravaipa village near Camp Grant. Although Camp — Dee Brown

To survive, the weak must feed on the hearts of the strong. — Dee Brown

Words are what give us power, that without words we are nothing, we do not exist. — Dee Brown

I call it magic, the crossing of our paths with the paths of others, how quickly, how completely, these magic meetings can turn us into directions we never dreamed of. — Dee Brown

Not all of Anthony's officers, however, were eager or even willing to join Chivington's well-planned massacre. Captain Silas Soule, Lieutenant Joseph Cramer, and Lieutenant James Connor protested that an attack on Black Kettle's peaceful camp would violate the pledge of safety given the Indians by both Wynkoop and Anthony, "that it would be murder in every sense of the word," and any officer participating would dishonor the uniform of the Army. — Dee Brown

Women in the West who insisted on wearing the full-skirted modes of the nineteenth century - including the hoop-skirt, the bustle, and Mother Hubbards - fought a continual battle against a hostile environment. The fact that flowing yards of silk and satin eventually won out over buckskin and rawhide is only one more confirmation of the theory that woman's vanity can conquer all, any place and any time. — Dee Brown

Another Chief remembered that since the Great Father promised them that they would never be moved they had been moved five times. "I think you had better put the Indians on wheels," he said sardonically, "and you can run them about whenever you wish. — Dee Brown

I want to say that further you are not a great chief of this country. That you have no following, no power, no control." Logan continued, "You are on an Indian reservation merely at the sufferance of the government. You are fed by the government, clothed by the government, your children are educated by the government, and all you have and are today is because of the government. If it were not for the government you would be freezing and starving today in the mountains. I merely say these things to notify you that you cannot insult the people of the United States of America or its committees ... the government feeds and clothes and educates your children now, and desires to teach you to become farmers, and to civilize you, and make you as white men.
-Senator John Logan, 1883 — Dee Brown

The white people were as thick and numerous and aimless as grasshoppers, moving always in a hurry but never seeming to get to whatever place it was they were going to. — Dee Brown

Participants in the massacre were later tried in Tucson and acquitted. To murder an Indian was considered no crime. — Dee Brown

I now think a little powder and lead is the best food for them, he concluded. 7 — Dee Brown

The librarians know the secrets, not the historians — Dee Brown

Nothing lives long
Only the earth and mountains — Dee Brown

They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it. — Dee Brown

The Indians knew that life was equated with the earth and its resources, that America was a paradise, and they could not comprehend why the intruders from the East were determined to destroy all that was Indian as well as America itself. — Dee Brown

To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature - the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy grades, the water, the soil, the air itself. — Dee Brown