Red Cloud Quotations

The Great Spirit will not make me suffer because I am ignorant. He will put me in a place where I shall be better off than in this world.

I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.

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.

We do not want riches, we want peace and love.

The white man has got the gold out of the land which belonged to the red man.

Even if you live forty or fifty years in this world, and then die, you cannot take all your goods with you.

The whites are the same everywhere. I see them every day.

The whites, who are educated and civilized, swindle me, and I am not hard to swindle because I do not know how to read and write.

When I was a young man, I was poor. In a war with other nations, I was in eighty-seven fights. There I received my name and was made Chief of my nation. But now I am old and am for peace.

Getting the goodness of light-skinned society ... Learn to live among them, learn their education, their language - all the goodness.

They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they kept only one; they promised to take our land, and they did.

After the seventh generation, we would become self-sufficient by taking their goodness and that (goodness) of the Lakota,

The fire of hope almost went out; we have to rekindle it,

You whites make all the ammunition.

I hope the Great Heavenly Father, who will look down upon us, will give all the tribes his blessing, that we may go forth in peace, and live in peace all our days, and that He will look down upon our children and finally lift us far above this earth.

When I was a young man, I was poor. In a war with other nations, I was in eighty-seven fights. There I received my name and was made Chief of my nation. But now I am old and am for peace.

Look at me. I was a warrior on this land where the sun rises, now I come from where the sun sets. Whose voice was first surrounded on this land - the red people with bows and arrows. The Great Father says he is good and kind to us. I can't see it...

We were told that they wished merely to pass through our country. . . to seek for gold in the far west . . . Yet before the ashes of the council are cold, the Great Father is building his forts among us. . . . His presence here is . . . an insult to the spirits of our ancestors. Are we then to give up their sacred graves to be allowed for corn?