The life of white men is slavery. They are prisoners in towns or… — Sitting Bull · Skopia

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The life of white men is slavery. They are prisoners in towns or farms. The life my people want is a life of freedom. I have seen nothing that a white man has, houses or railways or clothing or food, that is as good as the right to move in the open country, and live in our own fashion.

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Topic

Modern life Native American life Simple living Freedom

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Person

Provenance

Current citation

Sitting Bull. Quoted in Great Speeches by Native Americans, edited by Bob Blaisdell. Dover Publications, 2012.

Original citation

Sitting Bull. Statement to journalist James Creel. 1882.

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Other quotes that share a subject, a time, or a voice with this one.

It is my land, my home, my father's land, to which I now ask to be allowed to return. I want to spend my last days there, and be buried among those mountains. If this could be I might die in peace, feeling that my people, placed in their native homes, would increase in numbers, rather than diminish as at present, and that our name would not become extinct.

1877

Another quote aboutTopic·Native American life

If you tie up a horse to a stake, do you expect he will grow fat? If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth, and compel him to stay there, he will not be contented, nor will he grow and prosper. I have asked some of the great white chiefs where they get their authority to say the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please. They can not tell me.

1879

Another quote aboutTopic·Native American life

Our life is frittered away by detail…. Simplify, simplify.

Henry David Thoreau

Walden · 1854

Another quote aboutTopic·Simple living

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Henry David Thoreau

Walden · 1854

Another quote aboutTopic·Simple living

What treaty that the whites have kept has the red man broken? Not one. What treaty that the whites ever made with us red men have they kept? Not one. When I was a boy the Sioux owned the world. The sun rose and set in their lands. They sent 10,000 horsemen to battle. Where are the warriors to-day? Who slew them? Where are our lands ? Who owns them ? What white man can say I ever stole his lands or a penny of his money? Yet they say I am a thief. What white woman, however lonely, was ever when a captive insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian. What white man has ever seen me drunk? Who has ever come to me hungry and gone unfed ? Who has ever seen me beat my wives or abuse my children ? What law have I broken ? Is it wrong for me to love my own ? Is it wicked in me because my skin is red ; because I am a Sioux ; because I was born where my fathers lived ; because I would die for my people and my country ?

1890

Another quote byPerson·Sitting Bull

Other media

Works in other forms that share a subject with this one.

Other media onSubject·Freedom

Book · 1859

John Stuart Mill

Song · 1980

Redemption Song

Bob Marley and the Wailers

Film · 2000

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Ang Lee