Top 30 Dee Brown Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature – the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy grades, the water, the soil, the air itself.”

— Dee Brown

2. “I call it magic, the crossing of our paths with the paths of others, how quickly, how completely, these magic meetings can turn us into directions we never dreamed of.”

— Dee Brown

3. “A short time later, near Gallina Springs, Graydon’s scouting party came upon the Mescaleros again. What happened there is not clear, because no Mescalero survived the incident.”

— Dee Brown

4. “The old men say the earth only endures. You spoke truly. You are right.”

— Dee Brown

5. “Nothing lives long Only the earth and mountains.”

— Dee Brown

6. “They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it.”

— Dee Brown

7. “Why do you not want schools?” the commissioner asked. “They will teach us to have churches,” Joseph answered. “Do you not want churches?” “No, we do not want churches.” “Why do you not want churches?” “They will teach us to quarrel about God,” Joseph said. “We do not want to learn that. We may quarrel with men sometimes about things on this earth, but we never quarrel about God. We do not want to learn that.”

— Dee Brown

8. “Quanah Parker. As the years went by he became a shrewd businessman, built a large house, and successfully managed his farm and ranch. He traveled all over the country, and went to Washington to ride in President Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugural parade.”

— Dee Brown

9. “The white people were as thick and numerous and aimless as grasshoppers, moving always in a hurry but never seeming to get to whatever place it was they were going to.”

— Dee Brown

10. “The Indians knew that life was equated with the earth and its resources, that America was a paradise, and they could not comprehend why the intruders from the East were determined to destroy all that was Indian as well as America itself.”

— Dee Brown

11. “And if the readers of this book should ever chance to see the poverty, the hopelessness, and the squalor of a modern Indian reservation, they may find it possible to truly understand the reasons why.”

— Dee Brown

12. “To survive, the weak must feed on the hearts of the strong.”

— Dee Brown

13. “Samoset knew that land came from the Great Spirit, was as endless as the sky, and belonged to no man. To humor these strangers in their strange ways, however, he went through a ceremony of transferring the land and made his mark on a paper for them. It was the first deed of Indian land to English colonists.”

— Dee Brown

14. “We rarely know the full power of words, in print or spoken.”

— Dee Brown

15. “You just don’t give up. There have been times when everything seemed to conspire against getting a book done or printed, and I would feel like turning my back on the whole thing. But I came back and persisted.”

— Dee Brown

16. “Only the New Englanders, who had destroyed or driven out all their Indians, spoke against Manifest Destiny.”

— Dee Brown

17. “When Joseph died on September 21, 1904, the agency physician reported the cause of death as “a broken heart.”

— Dee Brown

18. “The librarians know the secrets, not the historians.”

— Dee Brown

19. “Participants in the massacre were later tried in Tucson and acquitted. To murder an Indian was considered no crime.”

— Dee Brown

20. “Already the once sweet-watered streams, most of which bore Indian names, were clouded with silt and the wastes of man; the very earth was being ravaged and squandered. To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature-the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy glades, the water, the soil, and the air itself.”

— Dee Brown

21. “Hinman believed that what the Indians needed was less land and more Christianity.”

— Dee Brown

22. “If the buffalo herd was a large one, sometimes the train would stop for an hour or so, the conductor, engineer, and entire crew joining the passengers in the sport. An.”

— Dee Brown

23. “Another Chief remembered that since the Great Father promised them that they would never be moved they had been moved five times. “I think you had better put the Indians on wheels,” he said sardonically, “and you can run them about whenever you wish.”

— Dee Brown

24. “Such a development endangered the entire Indian policy of the government, which aimed to eradicate everything Indian among the tribes and make them over into white men.”

— Dee Brown

25. “He was so certain it was the right thing to do. And we all know, don’t we, gentlemen, of the deadliness of righteous men?”

— Dee Brown

26. “Women in the West who insisted on wearing the full-skirted modes of the nineteenth century – including the hoop-skirt, the bustle, and Mother Hubbards – fought a continual battle against a hostile environment. The fact that flowing yards of silk and satin eventually won out over buckskin and rawhide is only one more confirmation of the theory that woman’s vanity can conquer all, any place and any time.”

— Dee Brown

27. “Indians!” Sitting Bull shouted. “There are no Indians left but me!”

— Dee Brown

28. “I now think a little powder and lead is the best food for them,” he concluded. 7.”

— Dee Brown

29. “The Navahos could forgive the Rope Thrower for fighting them as a soldier, for making prisoners of them, even for destroying their food supplies, but the one act they never forgave him for was cutting down their beloved peach trees.”

— Dee Brown

30. “A bonnet costs twenty dollars, and implies a shawl and gown to match. A bonnet to one wife, with shawl and gown to match, implies the like to every other wife.” The man paused, shook his head ruefully and concluded: “This taste for female finery is breaking up our Mormon homes. Brigham Young may soon be the only man in Salt Lake City rich enough to clothe a dozen wives.”28.”

— Dee Brown

31. “I’ve tried word processors, but I think I’m too old a dog to use one.”

— Dee Brown

32. “We must live near the buffalo or starve.”

— Dee Brown

33. “The Great Spirit raised both the white man and the Indian,” Red Cloud said. “I think he raised the Indian first. He raised me in this land and it belongs to me. The white man was raised over the great waters, and his land is over there. Since they crossed the sea, I have given them room. There are now white people all about me. I have but a small spot of land left. The Great Spirit told me to keep it.”

— Dee Brown

34. “The white man knows how to make everything,” he said, “but he does not know how to distribute it.”

— Dee Brown