American Indian Stories quotes

These were my mother’s pride—my wild freedom and overflowing spirits.

She taught me no fear save that of intruding myself upon others.

Having gone many paces ahead I stopped, panting for breath, and laughing with glee as my mother watched my every movement. I was not wholly conscious of myself, but was more keenly alive to the fire within.

Having gone many paces ahead I stopped, panting for breath, and laughing with glee as my mother watched my every movement. I was not wholly conscious of myself, but was more keenly alive to the fire within.

It was as if I were the activity, and my hands and feet were only experiments for my spirit to work upon.

Returning from the river, I tugged beside my mother, with my hand upon the bucket I believed I was carrying. One time, on such a return, I remember a bit of conversation we had.

Slackening my speed, I was greatly vexed that my shadow should check its pace also. Daring it to the utmost, as I thought, I sat down upon a rock imbedded in the hillside.

So! my shadow had the impudence to sit down beside me!

Now my comrades caught up with me, and began to ask why I was running away so fast.

She meant to make some real coffee. But neither she nor the warrior, whom the law of our custom had compelled to partake of my insipid hospitality, said anything to embarrass me.

They treated my best judgment, poor as it was, with the utmost respect.

It was not till long years afterward that I learned how ridiculous a thing I had done.

With my bare fingers I tried to pick out some of the colors, for they seemed so near the surface. But my fingers began to sting with the intense cold, and I had to bite them hard to keep from crying.

From that day on, for many a moon, I believed that glass marbles had river ice inside of them.

The first turning away from the easy, natural flow of my life occurred in an early spring. It was in my eighth year; in the month of March, I afterward learned.

With a sad, slow smile, she answered: “There! I knew you were wishing to go, because Judéwin has filled your ears with the white man’s lies. Don’t believe a word they say!

Their words are sweet, but, my child, their deeds are bitter.

You will cry for me, but they will not even soothe you. Stay with me, my little one! Your brother Dawée says that going East, away from your mother, is too hard an experience for his baby sister.”

The interpreter heard me, and answered: “Yes, little girl, the nice red apples are for those who pick them; and you will have a ride on the iron horse if you go with these good people.”

I had never seen a train, and he knew it.

“Mother, I am going East! I like big red apples, and I want to ride on the iron horse! Mother, say yes!” I pleaded.

Late in the morning, my friend Judéwin gave me a terrible warning. Judéwin knew a few words of English; and she had overheard the paleface woman talk about cutting our long, heavy hair.

Our mothers had taught us that only unskilled warriors who were captured had their hair shingled by the enemy. Among our people, short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards!

We discussed our fate some moments, and when Judéwin said, “We have to submit, because they are strong,” I rebelled.

And now my long hair was shingled like a coward’s! In my anguish I moaned for my mother, but no one came to comfort me. Not a soul reasoned quietly with me, as my own mother used to do; for now

I was only one of many little animals driven by a herder.

A short time after our arrival we three Dakotas were playing in the snowdrift. We were all still deaf to the English language, excepting Judéwin, who always heard such puzzling things.

As I sat eating my dinner, and saw that no turnips were served,

I whooped in my heart for having once asserted the rebellion within me.

Among the legends the old warriors used to tell me were many stories of evil spirits. But I was taught to fear them no more than those who stalked about in material guise.

I blamed the hardworking, well-meaning, ignorant woman who was inculcating in our hearts her superstitious ideas. Though I was sullen in all my little troubles, as soon as I felt better I was ready again to smile upon the cruel woman.

Within a week I was again actively testing the chains which tightly bound my individuality like a mummy for burial.

The melancholy of those black days has left so long a shadow that it darkens the path of years that have since gone by. These sad memories rise above those of smoothly grinding school days.

Though I was sullen in all my little troubles, as soon as I felt better I was ready again to smile upon the cruel woman. Within a week I was again actively testing the chains which tightly bound my individuality like a mummy for burial.

The melancholy of those black days has left so long a shadow that it darkens the path of years that have since gone by.

These sad memories rise above those of smoothly grinding school days. Perhaps my Indian nature is the moaning wind which stirs them now for their present record.

My mother had never gone inside of a schoolhouse, and so she was not capable of comforting her daughter who could read and write. Even nature seemed to have no place for me.

I was neither a wee girl nor a tall one; neither a wild Indian nor a tame one.

This deplorable situation was the effect of my brief course in the East, and the unsatisfactory “teenth” in a girl’s years.

Leaving the crowd as quickly as possible, I was soon in my room. The rest of the night I sat in an armchair and gazed into the crackling fire. I laughed no more in triumph when thus alone.

The little taste of victory did not satisfy a hunger in my heart.

In my mind I saw my mother far away on the Western plains, and she was holding a charge against me.

It was the cruel paleface who caused the death of your sister and your uncle, my brave brother. It is this same paleface who offers in one palm the holy papers, and with the other gives a holy baptism of firewater.

He is the hypocrite who reads with one eye, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ and with the other gloats upon the sufferings of the Indian race.

” Then suddenly discovering a new fire in the bluffs, she exclaimed, “Well, well, my daughter, there is the light of another white rascal!”

For these same papers I had forgotten the healing in trees and brooks. On account of my mother’s simple view of life, and my lack of any, I gave her up, also. I made no friends among the race of people I loathed.

Like a slender tree, I had been uprooted from my mother, nature, and God.

I was shorn of my branches, which had waved in sympathy and love for home and friends. The natural coat of bark which had protected my oversensitive nature was scraped off to the very quick.

I was shorn of my branches, which had waved in sympathy and love for home and friends. The natural coat of bark which had protected my oversensitive nature was scraped off to the very quick.

Now a cold bare pole I seemed to be, planted in a strange earth.

Still, I seemed to hope a day would come when my mute aching head, reared upward to the sky, would flash a zigzag lightning across the heavens. With this dream of vent for a long-pent consciousness, I walked again amid the crowds.

With half-closed eyes I watch the huge cloud shadows in their noiseless play upon the high bluffs opposite me, while into my ear ripple the sweet, soft cadences of the river’s song. Folded hands lie in my lap, for the time forgot.

My heart and I lie small upon the earth like a grain of throbbing sand.

Drifting clouds and tinkling waters, together with the warmth of a genial summer day, bespeak with eloquence the loving Mystery round about us.

Finally resuming the chair at my desk I feel in keen sympathy with my fellow-creatures, for I seem to see clearly again that all are akin.

The racial lines, which once were bitterly real, now serve nothing more than marking out a living mosaic of human beings.

And even here men of the same color are like the ivory keys of one instrument where each resembles all the rest, yet varies from them in pitch and quality of voice.

I sat down between my father and mother as I used to do, but I did not feel at home. The place where my old grandmother used to sit was now unoccupied. With my mother I bowed my head.

Alike our throats were choked and tears were streaming from our eyes; but far apart in spirit our ideas and faiths separated us.

My grief was for the soul unsaved; and I thought my mother wept to see a brave man’s body broken by sickness.

Pointing a small forefinger toward the man lying on the grass, she cried, “Uncle, you will go after the pony tomorrow!” And pleased with her solution of the problem, she skipped wildly about.

Her childish faith in her elders was not conditioned by a knowledge of human limitations, but thought all things possible to grownups.

“Hähob!” exclaimed the mother, with a rising inflection, implying by the expletive that her child’s buoyant spirit be not weighted with a denial.

“Come!” she whispers, and turns to go; but the young man, numb and helpless, staggers nigh to falling.

The sight of his weakness makes her strong.

A mighty power thrills her body. Stooping beneath his outstretched arms grasping at the air for support, Tusee lifts him upon her broad shoulders. With half-running, triumphant steps she carries him away into the open night.

In deep abstraction Blue-Star Woman prepared her morning meal.

“Who am I?” had become the obsessing riddle of her life.

She was no longer a young woman, being in her fifty-third year. In the eyes of the white man’s law, it was required of her to give proof of her membership in the Sioux tribe.

The generosity of her friend had often saved her from starvation.

Generosity is said to be a fault of Indian people, but neither the Pilgrim Fathers nor Blue-Star Woman ever held it seriously against them.

Blue-Star Woman was even grateful for this gift of food. She was fond of coffee—that black drink brought hither by those daring voyagers of long ago.

when public feasts were given in honor of the virtuous girls and young men of the tribe. Untold mischief is now possible through these broken ancient laws. The younger generation were not being properly trained in the high virtues.

A slowly starving race was growing mad, and the pitifully weak sold their lands for a pot of porridge.

“He, he, he! He, he, he!” he lamented. “Small Voice Woman, my own relative is being represented as the mother of this strange Blue-Star—the papers were made by two young Indian men who have learned the white man’s ways.

High Flier was taken before the superintendent, who charged him with setting fires to destroy government buildings and found him guilty. Thus Chief High Flier was sent to jail. He had already suffered much during his life.

He was the voiceless man of America.

And now in his old age he was cast into prison. The chagrin of it all, together with his utter helplessness to defend his own or his people’s human rights, weighed heavily upon his spirit.

We would open the door of American opportunity to the red man and encourage him to find his rightful place in our American life. We would remove the barriers that hinder his normal development.

Wardship is no substitute for American citizenship, therefore we seek his enfranchisement.

The many treaties made in good faith with the Indian by our government we would like to see equitably settled.