Red Cloud Quotes

I have tried to get from my Great Father what is right and just. I have not altogether succeeded. I want you to believe with me, to know with me, that which is right and just. I represent the whole Sioux nation. They will be grieved by what I represent. I am no Spotted Tail, who will say one thing one day, and be bought for a fish the next. Look at me! I am poor, naked, but I am chief of a nation.

We are told that Spotted Tail has consented to be the Beggars’ Chief. Those Indians who go over to the white man can be nothing but beggars, for he respects only riches, and how can an Indian be a rich man? He cannot without ceasing to be an Indian. As for me, I have listened patiently to the promises of the Great Father, but his memory is short. I am now done with him. This is all I have to say.

I was brought up among traders and those who came out there in the early times. I had good times with them; they treated me mostly always right; always well; they taught me to use clothes, to use tobacco, to use fire-arms and ammunition.

All the promises made in the treaty have never been fulfilled. The object of the whites is to crush the Indians down to nothing. The Great Spirit will judge these things hereafter. All the words I sent never reached the Father. They are lost before they get here. I am chief of the thirty-nine nations of Sioux. I will not take the paper with me. It is all lies.

This was all very well until the Great Father sent another kind of men out there, men who drank whisky; men who were so bad that the Great Father could not keep them at home, so he sent them out there.

Friends, it has been our misfortune to welcome the white man. We have been deceived. He brought with him some shining things that pleased our eyes; he brought weapons more effective than our own: above all, he brought the spirit water that makes one forget for a time old age, weakness, and sorrow. But I wish to say to you that if you would possess these things for yourselves, you must begin anew and put away the wisdom of your fathers. You must lay up food, and forget the hungry. When your house is built, your storeroom filled, then look around for a neighbor whom you can take at a disadvantage, and seize all that he has! My countrymen, shall the glittering trinkets of this rich man, his deceitful drink that overcomes the mind, shall these things tempt us to give up our homes, our hunting grounds, and the honorable teaching of our old men? Shall we permit ourselves to be driven to and fro—to be herded like the cattle of the white man? He died in 1909

We do not ask for riches; we do not want much; but we want our children properly trained and brought up. We look to you for that. Riches here do no good. We cannot take them away with us out of this world, but we want to have love and peace. The money, the riches, that we have in this world, as Secretary Cox lately told me, we cannot take these into the next world. If this is so, I would like to know why the Commissioners who are sent out there do nothing but rob to get the riches of this world away from us.

I do not want to go that way. I want a straight line. I have seen enough of towns. There are plenty of stores between here and my home, and there is no occasion to go out of the way to buy goods. I have no business in New York. I want to go back the way I came. The whites are the same everywhere. I see them every day.