Top 8 Quotes & Sayings by Standing Bear

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American leader Standing Bear.
Last updated on November 7, 2024.
Standing Bear

Standing Bear was a Ponca chief and Native American civil rights leader who successfully argued in U.S. District Court in 1879 in Omaha that Native Americans are "persons within the meaning of the law" and have the right of habeas corpus, thus becoming the first Native American judicially granted civil rights under American law. His first wife Zazette Primeau (Primo), daughter of Lone Chief, mother of Prairie Flower and Bear Shield, was also a signatory on the 1879 writ that initiated the famous court case.

Friends and brothers, The Almighty created us Indians. We are as he made us. The Almighty has given to the whites a book to read, and they have plenty of things to work with. The Indian has no book. He cannot read.
Man's heart away from nature becomes hard.
My first years were spent living just as my forefathers had lived - roaming the green, rolling hills of what are now the states of South Dakota and Nebraska. — © Standing Bear
My first years were spent living just as my forefathers had lived - roaming the green, rolling hills of what are now the states of South Dakota and Nebraska.
And when native man left off this form of development, his humanization was retarded in growth.
God never does anything wrong. He knows what is best for me. No man can understand God, or know why He deals with us as He does.
There is one God, and He made both Indians and white men. We were all made out of the dust of the earth.
If a white man had land, and some one should swindle him, that man would try to get it back, and you would not blame him.
You have driven me from the East to this place, and I have been here two thousand years or more....My friends, if you took me away from this land it would be very hard for me. I wish to die in this land. I wish to be an old man here....I have not wished to give even a part of it to the Great Father. Though he would give me a million dollars or more I would not give to him this land....When people want to slaughter cattle they drive them along until they get them to a corral, and then they slaughter them. So it was with us....My children have been exterminated; my brother has been killed.
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