Parba-Wa-Samen (Ten Bears) of the Yamparika Comanche, ‘Medicine Lodge Creek Peace Conference, 1867

My people have never first drawn a bow or fired a gun against the whites. There has been trouble on the line between us, and my young men have danced the war dance. But it was not begun by us. It was you who sent out the first soldier and we who sent out the second. Two years ago I came upon this road, following the buffalo, that my wives and children might have their cheeks plump and their bodies warm. But the soldiers fired upon s, and since that time there has been a noise like that of a thunderstorm, and we have not known why way to go… Nor have we been made to cry once alone. The blue-dressed soldiers and the Utes came from out of the night when it was dark and still, and for campfires they lit our lodges. Instead of hunting game they killed my braves, and the warriors of the tribe cut short their hair for the dead. So it was in Texas. They made sorrow come in our camps, and we went out like buffalo bulls when their cows are attacked. When we found them we killed them, and their scalps hang in our lodges. The Comanches are not weak and blind, like the pups of a dog when seven sleeps old. They are strong and farsighted, like grown horses. We took their road and we went on it. The white women cried and our women laughed.
But there are things which you have said to me which I do not like. They are not sweet like sugar, but bitter like gourds. You said that you wanted to put us on a reservation, to build us houses and make us medicine lodges. I do not want them. I was born upon the prairie, where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures and where everything drew a free breath. I want to die there and not within walls. I know every stream and every wood between the Rio Grande and the Arkansas. I have hunted and lived over that country. I lived like my fathers before me, and like them, I lived happily.
When I was at Washington the Great White Father told me that all the Comanche land was ours, and that no one should hinder us in living upon it. So why do you ask us to leave the rivers, and the sun, and the wind, and live in houses? Do not ask us to give up the buffalo for the sheep. The young men have heard talk of this, and it has made them sad and angry. Do not speak of it more…
If the Texans had kept out of my country, there might have been peace. But that which you now say we must live on is too small. The Texans have taken away the places where the grass grew the thickest and the timber was the best. Had we kept that, we might have done the things you ask. But it is too late. The white man has the country which we loved, and we only wish to wander on the prairie until we die.

Ta-oya-te-duta (Little Crow) of the Dakota (Santee Sioux), 1862

Ta-oya-te-duta is not a coward, and he is not a fool! When did he run away from his enemies? When did he leave his braves behind on the warpath and turn back to his tepee? When he ran away from your enemies, he walked behind on your trail with his face to the Ojibways and covered your backs as a she-bear covers her cubs! Is Ta-oya-te-duta without scalps? Look at his war feathers! Behold the scalp locks of your enemies hanging there on his lodgepoles! Do you call him a coward? Ta-oya-te-duta is not a coward, and he is not a fool. Braves, you are like little children; you know not what you are doing.
You are full of the white man’s devil water. You are like dogs in the Hot Moon when they run mad ans snap at their own shadows. We are only little herds of buffalo left scattered; the great herds that once covered the prairies are no more. See! – the white men are like the locusts when they fly so thick that the whole sky is a snowstorm. You may kill one – two – ten; yes as many as the leaves in the forest yonder, and their brothers will not miss them. Kill one – two –ten, and ten times ten will come to kill you. Count your fingers all day long and white men with guns in their hands will come faster than you can count.
Yes, they fight among themselves – away off. Do you hear the thunder of their big guns? No; it would take you two moons to run down to where they are fighting, and all the way your path would be among white soldiers as thick as tamaracks in the swamps of the Ojibways. Yes, they fight among themselves, but if you strike at them they will all turn on you and devour you and your women and little children just as the locusts in their time fall on the trees and devour all the leaves in one day.
You are fools. You cannot see the face of your chief; your eyes are full of smoke. You cannot hear his voice; your ears are full of roaring waters. Braves, you are little children – you are fools. You will die like the rabbits when the hungry wolves hunt them in January.
Ta-oya-te-duta is not a coward; he will die with you.

Context
Ten Bears
Comanche chief, old man at time of his speech, generally conciliatory in approach to Euro-Americans.. Visited Washington in Sep 1872 and agreed to bring his people into Fort Sill – died soon after.
Medicine Lodge- first major initiative of President Grants ‘peace policy.’ Major conference involving 5,000 Indians of Southern plains tribes including Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapahoe. Established two large reservations for the southern tribes, in return for cession of claims to traditional territories in south west and annuities of food, clothing and weapons. Treaty proved unenforceable on both sides, and warfare continued into 1870s.

Little Crow
Leader of Santee Sioux, based in Minnesota, who had signed an 1851 treaty renouncing most of their tribal lands in return for an $1.4 million annuity from federal govt. Some Santee, including Little Crow, made considerable efforts to assimilate, turning to farming, building brick houses, adopting European dress and converting to Christianity. However, treaty system riddled with corruption, especially among traders who sold food and other provisions to Santee. When annuity payments delayed in 1862, trader Andrew Myrick publicly observed that hungry Indians should ‘eat grass or their own dung.’ A group of Santee men, surprised in act of stealing food, killed 5 white farmers, and Little Crow decided to lead his people in a general attack on whites Several hundred whites killed, including many civilians, before rising suppressed. 303 Santee sentenced to hang; Lincoln eventually commutes sentence of all but 38, largest mass execution in US history. Remainder of Santee driven out of Minnesota.