Tecumseh Quote

Brothers — My people wish for peace; the red men all wish for peace; but where the white people are, there is no peace for them, except it be on the bosom of our mother. Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun. Will we let ourselves be destroyed in our turn without a struggle, give up our homes, our country bequeathed to us by the Great Spirit, the graves of our dead and everything that is dear to us? I know you will cry with me, Never! NEVER!.

"Sleep Not Longer, O Choctaws and Chickasaws", a speech before a joint council of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations (1811); also in The Way : An Anthology Of American Indian Literature (1972) by Shirley Hill Witt and Stan Steiner