Black Hawk Quotes

6 Sourced Quotes

We told them [the white men] to let us alone, and keep away from us; but they followed on, and beset our paths, and they coiled themselves among us like the snake.

Black Hawk
How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.

Black Hawk
I saw my evil day at hand. The sun rose dim on us in the morning, and at night it sank in a dark cloud, and looked like a ball of fire. That was the last sun that shone on Black Hawk. His heart is dead.... He is now a prisoner to the white man.

Black Hawk
[Black Hawk] has done nothing for which an Indian ought to be ashamed. He has fought for his countrymen, the squaws and papooses, against white men, who came year after year, to cheat them and take away their lands. You know the cause of our making war. It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it.

Black Hawk
The path to glory is rough, and many gloomy hours obscure it. May the Great Spirit shed light on your path, so that you may never experience the humility that the power of the American government has reduced me to. This is the wish of a man who, in his native forests, was once as proud and bold as yourself.

Black Hawk
My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon. So long as they occupy and cultivate it, they have a right to the soil. Nothing can be sold but such things as can be carried away

Black Hawk