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“As much as his heart remained rooted here, what lay beyond his country, beyond his nation, called to him like a cord buried deep within, pulling taut, drawing him away.”
― Leslie K. Simmons, Red Clay, Running Waters

“Now the ash of their aspirations lay bitter on his tongue. He was certain he would not have done differently, but oh, if only he had known how briefly the taste of the possible would be sweet on his lips.”
― Leslie K. Simmons, Red Clay, Running Waters

“Yes, he is a fluent and forward young man, with a great deal of Indian Pride. If only his heart were subdued by Divine grace, he might be exceedingly useful to his people.”
― Leslie K. Simmons, Red Clay, Running Waters

“. . .(W)e are Canadians and not Americans because of a foolish war that scarcely anyone wanted or needed, but which, once launched, no one knew how to stop.”
― Pierre Berton, The Invasion of Canada: 1812-1813

“The one generalization which is true about America is that everything is true about it. It's impossible to say anything that isn't true, good or bad. Our enemies are right. Our friends are right. It's an awful big country, an awful lot of different kinds of people in it, and violence always has been part of our story. It is, you know. I've seen it in my own lifetime, long before this period and we certainly read about it in history. That's the way we won in the country and stole it away from the Indians and all the rest of it... I've talked to people in other ex-colonies. Nice people. When you mention the British [they] burst into tears of anger. Literally tears of rage about our nice English cousins, so the bad things are true about them. They burnt the roofs off of the Irish and starved them out into the cold. There's nothing that you can think of that the English didn't do to that Island right next door to them, to the Irish over a period of seven hundred years. And we're English, then we added a lot of other violent mixtures to the brew. I think man is a crazy animal.”
― Orson Welles

“Happens more than we want to know. There are Indian kids, just like your brother, heck just like me, all over this Valley. Fostered out, adopted out, working their fingers to the bone--heck, many of them not being properly fed so they are nothing but muscle and bone to begin with, thinking that if they just do good enough, maybe, just maybe, someday they will actually belong.

Mostly what I see is once they've been used up--in some cases broken beyond repair--they're thrown away like all the battered farm equipment you see sitting in the back of farmyards, back by the windbreak."

- Cash Blackbear in Girl Gone Missing”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Girl Gone Missing

“The Apparition by Stewart Stafford

The Indian burial ground,
Lay beyond the tree steeples,
Wind murmured in the branches,
Of lost lands and wounded ancestors.

A new tenant's first night at home,
A Wendigo came in a pandemic fugue,
The head, neck and shoulders visible,
Jittery, contorted shapes on blinds.

Wild dawn packing, screeching tyres,
Home sweet home, still beyond reach,
Out of the driveway at top speed then,
Flight from an entity that won't leave you.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“It is simply not enough to know that English politicians and armies won the battle for eastern America—we already knew that. What we need to take into account, now that history is more than past politics, is that in cultural attraction and educational sophistication the English were decidedly inferior to the their French and Indian rivals, who lost what they did for other reasons.”
― James Axtell, Invasion Within

“It is simply not enough to know that English politicians and armies won the battle for eastern America—we already knew that. What we need to take into account, now that history is more than past politics, is that in cultural attraction and educational sophistication the English were decidedly inferior to their French and Indian rivals, who lost what they did for other reasons.”
― James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America

“They missed the chance to learn that “savage�� and “civilized�� are relative terms without objective authority or content, that “men call that barbarism�� which simply is “not common to them��. Such a lesson was badly needed in that fiercely intolerant age, as it still is in our own more subtly and intolerant one.”
― James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America

“The blind faith that they were God’s “chosen people�� prevented them from recognizing the tragic hubris in their national compulsion to “reduce�� the natives to less than they were. Born of pride, the European philosophy of conversion spawned the triple terrors of cultural arrogance, dogmatism, and intolerance on a grand scale.”
― James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America

“Nothing about the the birth of America is great - America is a terrorist nation, built by terrorists who invaded other people's land, stripped them of their homes, and built a spin-off of the ruthless British empire over their blood and bones.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth

“The pilgrims were not pioneers, they were terrorists.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth

“Hesitant at first, the Mormons required some encouragement from slavers, who tortured children with knives or hot irons to call attention to their trade and elicit sympathy from potential buyers or threated to kill any child who went unpurchased. Brigham Young's son-in-law Charles Decker witnessed the execution of an Indian girl before he agreed to exchange his gun for another captive. In the end, the Mormons became buyers and even found a way to rationalize their participation in this human market. "Buy up the Lamanite [Indian] children," Brigham Young counseled his brethren in the town of Parowan, "and educate them and teach them the gospel, so that many generations would not pass ere they should become a white and delightsome people.”
― Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

“Indian slavery never went away, but rather coexisted with African slavery from the sixteenth all the way through the late nineteenth century.”
― Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

“Until quite recently, we did not have even a ballpark estimate of the number of Natives held in bondage. Since Indian slavery was largely illegal, its victims toiled, quite literally, in dark corners and behind locked doors, giving us the impression that they were fewer than they actually were. Because Indian slaves did not have to cross an ocean, no ship manifests or port records exist, but only vague references to slaving raids.”
― Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

“If we were to add up all the Indian slaves taken in the New World from the time of Columbus to the end of the nineteenth century, the figure would run somewhere between 2.5 and 5 million slaves.”
― Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

“But in relative terms, indigenous peoples of the New World experienced an even more catastrophic decline in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the Caribbean basin, along the Gulf coast, and across large regions of northern Mexico and the American Southwest, Native populations were reduced by seventy, eighty, or even ninety percent through a combination of warfare, famine, epidemics, and slavery.”
― Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

“In fact, a synergistic relationship existed between the two: slaving raids spread germs and caused deaths; deceased slaves needed to be replaced, and thus their deaths spurred additional raids.”
― Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

“Indian women could be worth up to fifty or sixty percent more than males.”
― Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

“In nomadic Indian societies, men specialized in activities less useful to European colonists, such as hunting and fishing, than women, whose traditional roles included weaving, food gathering, and child rearing. Some early sources also indicate that women were considered better suited to domestic service, as they were though to be less threatening in the home environment.”
― Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

“Children were more adaptable than grown-ups, learned languages more easily, and in the fullness of time could even identify with their captors. Indeed, one of the most striking features of this form of bondage is that Indian slaves could eventually become part of the dominant society.”
― Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

“My grandfather was a voyageur, and lived to be of great age,�� recalled “Old�� Pierre, “and [he] told me the stories of the wild Indians of those days, and our brave French Canadians who were a match for them. There was a great man of whom he used to speak much, Monsieur de Langlade. […] My grandfather told me that when Langlade was a child about seven years of age, there was a war raging between the Ottawas, many of whom lived at Michilimackinac, and another tribe allied to the English. Twice the young men of the Ottawas had gone forth to attack a village of the enemy, and each time had they been driven back. The French officer at the fort urged them to make the attack again. The Ottawas were not willing. At last, their chief said that he had had a dream; that in the dream he saw a fight; that the young Langlade was there; and that in his dream the Ottawas seemed to win the day. The dream gave the young men courage on its being told them. They must be accompanied by the child Langlade, and they would go upon the war-path once more. The father Langlade, at first unwilling, at last agreed, but only on a pledge given by the boy that he would never disgrace his father by being a coward. The Ottawas were now ready to go forth; they advanced with the terrible war-cries of the [Natives]; inspired by the recollection of the dream and the presence of the boy, they gained the day […]. The young Langlade was now held in great honor; they said he was no doubt
preserved by a mighty Manitou [“Great Spirit”].”
― Cody Cole, Auke-wingeke-tawso, or, 'Defender of His Country': The Circumstances & Services of Charles Michel de Langlade

“My grandfather was a voyageur, and lived to be of great age,�� recalled “Old�� Pierre, “and [he] told me the stories of the wild Indians of those days, and our brave French Canadians who were a match for them. There was a great man of whom he used to speak much, Monsieur de Langlade. […] My grandfather told me that when Langlade was a child about seven years of age, there was a war raging between the Ottawas, many of whom lived at Michilimackinac, and another tribe allied to the English. Twice the young men of the Ottawas had gone forth to attack a village of the enemy, and each time had they been driven back. The French officer at the fort urged them to make the attack again. The Ottawas were not willing. At last, their chief said that he had had a dream; that in the dream he saw a fight; that the young Langlade was there; and that in his dream the Ottawas seemed to win the day. The dream gave the young men courage on its being told them. They must be accompanied by the child Langlade, and they would go upon the war-path once more. The father Langlade, at first unwilling, at last agreed, but only on a pledge given by the boy that he would never disgrace his father by being a coward. The Ottawas were now ready to go forth; they advanced with the terrible war-cries of the [Natives]; inspired by the recollection of the dream and the presence of the boy, they gained the day […]. The young Langlade was now held in great honor; they said he was no doubt preserved by a mighty Manitou [“Great Spirit”].”
― Cody Cole, Auke-wingeke-tawso, or, 'Defender of His Country': The Circumstances & Services of Charles Michel de Langlade

“Indeed, so prevalent had his leadership on the battlefield been that day, that Langlade was jointly proclaimed “Ake-wauge-ketausa��, or “Military Conqueror��, by his Indigenous brethren, with the literal translation of his title meaning “He Who is Fierce for the Land��, although an alternative spelling of “Auke-winge-ketaw-so��, meaning “Defender of his Country�� is also recorded. However, to the Menomonee (Folles Avoines) specifically, he was simply known henceforth as the “Bravest of the Brave.”
― Cody Cole, Auke-wingeke-tawso, or, 'Defender of His Country': The Circumstances & Services of Charles Michel de Langlade

“...archaeologists have a peculiar love-hate relationship with Moore. We love him for all that information he left us, but we hate him for digging up all those sites before the modern era of archaeology brought new field methods that would have greatly enhanced his reports.”
― Jerald T. Milanich, Famous Florida Sites: Mt. Royal and Crystal River

“The ability to locate and trace these veins across the landscape has elicited the astonishment of all who have actually seen what was accomplished. Sometimes the excavations are connected, and in some places, it is evident that drains were cut through the bedrock to remove water.”
― David Pompeani, Great Water: The Lost Mines of Lake Superior

“Similarly, others think that the mined copper has gone “missing,�� and that this perceived absence of artifacts in North America was further evidence for trans-Atlantic trade. I learned that this misunderstanding arose because most people are totally unaware that thousands of copper artifacts made by Native Americans have been found around Lake Superior and are still regularly discovered to this day. The reality is that these so-called missing copper artifacts were simply lost over vast stretches of forests, lakes, rivers, and prairies. One can only guess how many missing artifacts are actually out there. If the size and extent of the prehistoric copper mines around Lake Superior are any indication, thousands of artifacts are still likely to be found.”
― David Pompeani, Great Water: The Lost Mines of Lake Superior

“You see, Ralph Turner and Victor Irish grew up in the 1920s and 1930s, listening to radio shows and watching Westerns in the theater. Growing up, they often played Cowboys and Indians in the fields and forests surrounding their homes. Like most people at the time, they had a Hollywood notion of Native American culture, which they used to try and visualize some kind of indigenous society that would produce copper tools and jewelry. They imagined the technical skill, the mines, and the workers that come with a metalworking society, like their own. However, the portrayal of Native Americans in the Westerns made it di^icult for them to imagine that Native American societies could have achieved this level of expertise.
Having a hard time picturing a Native American using copper, Ralph half-jokingly says, "Maybe the Vikings came to Wisconsin before Columbus?" while shrugging his shoulders.”
― David Pompeani, Great Water: The Lost Mines of Lake Superior

“At school, my science teacher talked about the ozone layer even as aerosol hairspray kept clouding the bathroom stalls. I tried to tell Mom about climate change, but she acted like I was gullible. If I was mad about losing our land, I was even angrier about what they'd done to it. While I still didn't know about the massacres, I knew enough to feel robbed. Manhatten was purchased with beads. Valuable furs had been traded for whiskey. White people used empty promises as tender, and in exchange, we Indians got blood quantum, our lineages tracked like thoroughbreds or dogs, destined to be turned into glue.”
― Deborah Jackson Taffa, Whiskey Tender: A Memoir