Frasi di Toro Seduto
Toro Seduto
Data di nascita: 1831
Data di morte: 15. Dicembre 1890
Toro Seduto è stato un condottiero nativo americano dei Sioux Hunkpapa. In realtà, il suo nome tradotto correttamente è "Bisonte Seduto".
Famoso capo indiano americano , è ricordato nella storia statunitense e dei nativi per aver mobilitato più di 3.500 guerrieri Sioux e Cheyenne nella famosa Battaglia di Little Big Horn, dove ottenne una schiacciante vittoria sul colonnello George Armstrong Custer del Settimo cavalleggeri, il 25 giugno 1876.
Frasi Toro Seduto
„È strano, ma vogliono arare la terra, e sono malati di avidità. Hanno fatto molte leggi, e queste leggi i ricchi possono infrangerle, ma i poveri no. Nella loro religione i poveri pregano, i ricchi no. Tolgono denaro ai poveri e ai deboli per sostenere i ricchi e i potenti.“
— Toro Seduto
citato in La terra è la nostra madre, p. 51
„La vostra gente stima gli uomini quando sono ricchi: perché hanno molte case, molta terra, molte squaw, non è così? [... ] Bene, diciamo allora che il mio popolo mi stima perché sono povero. Questa è la differenza!“
— Toro Seduto
Toro Seduto a un giornalista del New York Herald, 16 novembre 1887
„Sette anni fa abbiamo stipulato un trattato con l'uomo bianco. Ci ha promesso che la terra dei bufali sarebbe stata nostra per sempre. Adesso minacciano di prenderci anche quella. Dovremmo cedere, fratelli? O invece dire loro: "Dovrai uccidermi prima di impossessarti del mio paese".“
— Toro Seduto
citato in La terra è la nostra madre, p. 52
„I hardly sustain myself beneath the weight of white men's blood that I have shed.“
— Sitting Bull
Context: I hardly sustain myself beneath the weight of white men's blood that I have shed. The whites provoked the war; their injustices, their indignities to our families, the cruel, unheard of and wholly unprovoked massacre at Fort Lyon … shook all the veins which bind and support me. I rose, tomahawk in hand, and I have done all the hurt to the whites that I could.
Recorded by the Jesuit priest Pierre-Jean De Smet after a council with Sitting Bull on June 19, 1868. Published in Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993. p. 79-80.
„You come here to tell us lies, but we don't want to hear them.“
— Sitting Bull
Context: You come here to tell us lies, but we don't want to hear them. If we told you more, you would have paid no attention. That is all I have to say.
As recorded by reporters covering a speech made by Sitting Bull to U.S. military officers at a conference between the military and the Sioux who had retreated to Canada. Published in Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993. p. 196.
„This is a good day to die. Follow me!“
— Sitting Bull
Rallying cry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn (25 June 1876), quoted in Campaigns of General Custer in the North-west by Judson Elliott Walker
„I am here by the will of the Great Spirit, and by his will I am chief.… I want to tell you that if the Great Spirit has chosen anyone to be the chief of this country, it is myself.“
— Sitting Bull
Testimony to the Dawes Commission (22 August 1883)
„I have killed, robbed, and injured too many white men to believe in a good peace. They are medicine, and I would eventually die a lingering death. I had rather die on the field of battle.“
— Sitting Bull
Recorded by Charles Larpenteur at Fort Union in 1867. Published in Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993. p. 73.
„Look at me, see if I am poor, or my people either. The whites may get me at last, as you say, but I will have good times till then. You are fools to make yourselves slaves to a piece of fat bacon, some hard-tack, and a little sugar and coffee.“
— Sitting Bull
Also told to Charles Larpenteur at Fort Union in 1867. Published in Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993. p. 73.
„I will remain what I am until I die, a hunter, and when there are no buffalo or other game I will send my children to hunt and live on prairie, for where an Indian is shut up in one place his body becomes weak.“
— Sitting Bull
Recorded by James M. Walsh, inspector in the Northwest Territory of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, at a conference with Sitting Bull on March 23, 1879. Published in Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993. p. 206.
„Because I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans; in my heart he put other and different desires. Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit. It is not necessary, that eagles should be crows.“
— Sitting Bull
Quoted in Vine Deloria, God Is Red: A Native View of Religion. Golden, Colo: Fulcrum Pub, 2003, cited to Virginia Armstrong, I have spoken; American history through the voices of the Indians. Chicago, Sage Books, 1971.
„I am nothing, neither a chief nor a soldier.“
— Sitting Bull
Recorded by a reporter after Sitting Bull's retreat to Canada after being defeated in the Black Hills War, originally published in the New York Herald on November 16, 1877. Published in Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993. p. 190.
