Sitting Bull to US Secretary of War, 1877

photo by Palmquist & Jurgens, 1884 
image source: PBS - THE WEST - Sitting Bull


For 64 years you have kept me and my people and treated us bad. What have we done that you should want us to stop? 
We have done nothing. It is all the people on your side that have started us to do all these depredations. We could not go anywhere else, and so we took refuge in this country. It was on this side of the country we learned to shoot, and that is the reason why I came back to it again. I would like to know why you came here. In the first place, I did not give you the country, but you followed me from one place to another, so I had to leave and come over to this country. I was born and raised in this country with the Red River Half-Breeds, and I intend to stop with them. I was raised hand in hand with the Red River Half Breeds, and we are going over to that part of the country, and that is the reason why I have come over here. That is the way 
I was raised, in the hands of these people here, and that is the way I intend to be with them. You have got ears, and you have got eyes to see with them, and you see how I live with these people. 
You see me? Here I am! If you think I am a fool you are a bigger fool than I am. This house is a medicine-house. 
Yon come here to tell us lies, but we don't want to hear them. 
I don't wish any such language used to me; that is, to tell me such lies in my great Mother's house. Don't you say two more words. 
Go back home where you came from. This country is mine, 
and I intend to stay here, and to raise this country full of grown people. See these people here. We were raised with them.

- Chief Tatanka-Iyotanka (aka Sitting Bull) -
 
1831 - December 15, 1890
 
Sitting Bull speaking to the U.S. Secretary of War & Secretary of the Interior, as recorded by the Northwest Mounted Police, Fort Walsh, Saskatchewan, Canada p. 9 (18 October 1877).