In Native American We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home. You had yours. We did not interfere with you. We do not want your civilization! – Crazy Horse To his friend, Major V. T. McGillycuddy, U.S. army surgeon.
Hokahey! Today is a good day to die. – Crazy Horse Exhorting his troops with this war cry before the Battle of the Little Bighorn
One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk. – Crazy Horse Leader of the Oglala Sioux, when the United States tried to buy the Black Hills. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown.
We preferred hunting to a life of idleness on the reservations. At times we did not get enough to eat, and we were not allowed to leave the reservation to hunt. – Crazy Horse Speaking to his parents on his deathbed, 1877.
A very great vision is needed, and the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky. – Crazy Horse To Be Just Is to Love: Homilies for a Church Renewing by Walter J. Burghardt.
I was not hostile to the white men. Sometimes my young men would attack the Indians who were their enemies and took their ponies. They did it in return. – Crazy Horse Buffalo Days by Homer Wheeler
I will return to you in stone. – Crazy Horse Prediction by the Oglala Lakota leader before his death in 1877, according to his friend Black Elk. A mountain carving memorial depicting Crazy Horse is today under construction in the Black Hills.
They tried to confine me. I tried to escape, and a soldier ran his bayonet into me. I have spoken. – Crazy Horse On his deathbed, 1877, after being bayoneted by a soldier in a guardhouse on the Sioux reservation.
Upon suffering beyond suffering, the Red Nation shall rise again, and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world filled with broken promises, selfishness and separations. A world longing for light again. – Crazy Horse While smoking Sacred Pipe with Sitting Bull, four days before he was assassinated.
Another white man’s trick! Let me go! Let me die fighting! – Crazy Horse During confrontation in which he was fatally wounded. Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains by Charles Alexander Eastman.
We preferred our own way of living. We were no expense to the government. All we wanted was peace and to be left alone. – Crazy Horse Buffalo Days by Homer Wheeler
I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole earth will become One Circle again. – Crazy Horse Sharing his last vision with Sitting Bull during ceremony with Sacred Pipe, just before his assassination.
At my death paint my body with red paint and plunge it into fresh water to be restored back to life, otherwise my bones will be turned into stone and my joints into flint in my grave, but my spirit will rise. – Crazy Horse
My friend, why should you wish to shorten my life by taking from me my shadow? – Crazy Horse To army surgeon Dr. Valentine T. McGillycuddy, who tried to take a photograph of him.
They say we massacred him, but he would have done the same to us had we not defended ourselves and fought to the last. – Crazy Horse About General George Armstrong Custer
I salute the light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am at that place within me, we shall be one. – Crazy Horse As he smoked the Sacred Pipe with Sitting Bull for the last time
I was tired of fighting. I went to Spotted Tail agency and asked that chief and his agent to let me live there in peace. I came here with the agent [Lee] to talk with the big white chief, but was not given a chance. – Crazy Horse To his parents on his deathbed, 1877.
