Native American Chief Quotes & Sayings

We were like deer. They were like grizzly bear. — Chief Joseph

The earth was created by the assistance of the sun, and it should be left as it was. The country was made without lines of demarcation, and it is no man's business to divide it. — Chief Joseph

A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter, quite in the described mode,
the Indians, as usual, having the advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white man's treatment of them, and probably have reason to be so. — Henry David Thoreau

All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth, befalls the children of the Earth. — Chief Seattle

If you talk to the animals they will talk with you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them you will not know them and what you do not know, you will fear. What one fears, one destroys. — Chief Dan George

Phillip hardened his grip on Totka's. "For all our manipulations, God always manages to get His way."
"A beautiful woman once told me our Jesus Creator is a good and wise chief, worthy of obedience without question. His plan is perfect. Wait, and you will see. — April W. Gardner

From nowhere we came; into nowhere we go. What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. — Crowfoot Blackfoot Warrior Chief 1890

We do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us? — Chief Seattle

One thing to remember is to talk to the animals. If you do, they will talk back to you. But if you don't talk to the animals, they won't talk back to you, then you won't understand, and when you don't understand you will fear, and when you fear you will destroy the animals, and if you destroy the animals, you will destroy yourself. — Chief Dan George

We have taken so much from your culture, I wish you had taken something from ours ... For there were some beautiful and good things within it. Perhaps now that the time has come, We are fearful that what you take will be lost ... I shall grab the instruments of the white man's success: His education, his skills, and society. — Chief Dan George

Where no one intrudes, many can live in harmony. — Chief Dan George

Our fathers gave us many laws which they had learned from their
fathers. These laws were good. — Chief Joseph

Like a man who has been dying for many days, a man in your city is numb to the stench. — Chief Seattle

The time will soon be here when my grandchild will long for the cry of a loon, the flash of a salmon, the whisper of spruce needles, or the screech of an eagle. But he will not make friends with any of these creatures and when his heart aches with longing, he will curse me. Have I done all to keep the air fresh? Have I cared enough about the water? Have I left the eagle to soar in freedom? Have I done everything I could to earn my grandchild's fondness? — Chief Dan George

As chief, I will represent my people in many different ways and might never know which particular action is destined to matter more than another, thus, all my actions should be considered potentially important and worthy of my best effort. — Jennifer Frick-Ruppert

Judge not a fellow man by the number of noses he has on his face, but by the number of faces he has on his nose. — Chief Long Spear Who Hunts Beavers

Anthropologist John Greenway has observed, Never in the entire history of the inevitable displacement of hunting tribes by advanced agriculturalists in the forty thousand generations of mankind has a native people been treated with more consideration, decency, and kindliness than the American Indians. The Mongoloids in displacing the first comers to Asia, the Negroes in displacing the aborigines in Africa, and every other group following the biological law of the Competitive Exclusion Principle thought like the Polynesian chief who once observed to a white officer, "I don't understand you English. You come here and take our land and then you spend the rest of your lives trying to make up for it. When my people came to these islands, we just killed the inhabitants and that was the end of it."[3] — Rousas John Rushdoony

We were taught to believe that the Great Spirit sees and hears everything, and that he never forgets, that hereafter he will give every man a spirit home according to his deserts; If he has been a good man, he will have a good home; if he has been a bad man, he will have a bad home. This I believe, and all my people believe the same. — Chief Joseph

So long as mists envelop you, be still. Be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists - as it surely will. Then act with courage. — Chief White Eagle

The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of the pond, the smell of the wind itself cleansed by a midday rain, or scented with pinon pine. The air is precious to the red man, for all things are the same breath - the animals, the trees, the man. — Chief Seattle

We are going by you without fighting if you will let us, but we are going by you anyhow! — Chief Joseph

I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. — Chief Joseph

We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills and the winding streams with tangled growth, as 'wild'. Only to the white man was nature a 'wilderness' and only to him was the land 'infested' with 'wild' animals and 'savage' people. To us it was home. Earth was beautiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. - Chief Standing River of the Lakota — Paul Goble

I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother's side was not an Indian chief. — Zora Neale Hurston

Suppose a white man should come to me and say, "Joseph, I like your horses. I want to buy them." I say to him, "No, my horses suit me; I will not sell them." Then he goes to my neighbor and says to him, "Joseph has some good horses. I want to buy them, but he refuses to sell." My neighbor answers, "Pay me the money and I will sell you Joseph's horses." The white man returns to me and says, "Joseph, I have bought your horses and you must let me have them." If we sold our lands to the government, this is the way they bought them. — Chief Joseph

The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.
All things are connected like the blood that unites one family.
Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
The earth is sacred and men and animals are but one part of it.
Treat the earth with respect so that it lasts for centuries to come and is a place of wonder and beauty for our children. — Extract From Chief Seattle.

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

I think the worst one [indian mascot] is the Cleveland Indians' Big Chief Wahoo. It's just a red face on a baseball with a big, toothy grin. It's the Sambo of all other offensive mascots. I have never seen a Native American smile that hard before, not even at a casino opening. — Wanda Sykes

We gathered up the kids and sat up on the hill. We had no time to get our chickens and no time to get our horses out of the corral. The water came in and smacked against the corral and broke the horses' legs. The drowned, and the chickens drowned. We sat on the hill and we cried. These are the stories we tell about the river," said [Ladona] Brave Bull Allard. The granddaughter of Chief Brave Bull, she told her story at a Missouri River symposium in Bismark, North Dakota, in the fall of 2003.

Before The Flood, her Standing Rock Sioux Tribe lived in a Garden of Eden, where nature provided all their needs. "In the summer, we would plant huge gardens because the land was fertile," she recalled. We had all our potatoes and squash. We canned all the berries that grew along the river. Now we don't have the plants and the medicine they used to make. — Bill Lambrecht

He who runs with the platypus is no more a man than he who swallows chesnuts — Chief Long Spear Who Hunts Beavers

Carl Jung tells in one of his books of a conversation he had with a Native American chief who pointed out to him that in his perception most white people have tense faces, staring eyes, and a cruel demeanor. He said: They are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something. They are always uneasy and restless. We don't know what they want. We think they are mad. — Eckhart Tolle

Your religion was written on tablets of stone, ours on our hearts. 8. We are part of the earth and the earth is part of us. — Chief Seattle

I'm not an Indian warrior chief. I'm not some demure little Indian woman healer talking spider this, spider that, am I? I'm not babbling about the four directions. Or the two-legged, four-legged, and winged. I'm talking like a twentieth-century Indian woman. Hell, a twenty-first century Indian, and you can't handle it, you wimp. — Sherman Alexie

Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle. In the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept us safe among them ... The animals had rights - the right of man's protection, the right to live, the right to multiply, the right to freedom, and the right to man's indebtedness. This concept of life and its relations filled us with the joy and mystery of living; it gave us reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all. — Chief Luther Standing Bear

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

Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. — Chief Seattle

The whites, too, shall pass - perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your own bed, and you might suffocate in your own waste. — Chief Seattle

The Great Spirit Chief who rules above all will smile upon this land ... and this time the Indian race is waiting and praying. — Chief Joseph

Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only change of worlds. — Chief Seattle

Wherever forests have not been mowed down, wherever the animal is recessed in their quiet protection, wherever the earth is not bereft of four-footed life - that to the white man is an 'unbroken wilderness.'
But for us there was no wilderness, nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but friendly. Our faith sought the harmony of man with his surroundings; the other sought the dominance of surroundings.
For us, the world was full of beauty; for the other, it was a place to be endured until he went to another world.
But we were wise. We knew that man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard. — Chief Luther Standing Bear

My son, you are now flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. By the ceremony performed this day, every drop of white blood was washed from your veins; you were taken into the Shawnee Nation ... — Chief Blackfish

We live, we die, and like the grass and trees, renew ourselves from the soft earth of the grave. Stones crumble and decay, faiths grow old and they are forgotten, but new beliefs are born. The faith of the villages is dust now ... but it will grow again ... like the trees. — Chief Joseph

Bad and cruel as our people were treated by the whites, not one of them
was hurt or molested by our band. ( ... )
The whites were complaining at the same time that we were intruding upon
their rights. They made it appear that they were the injured party, and
we the intruders. They called loudly to the great war chief to protect
their property.
How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right
look like wrong, and wrong like right. — Black Hawk