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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Kent Nerburn
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January 10 - January 25, 2023
Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth. — Chief Seattle
It does not require many words to speak the truth. ”
You must speak straight so that your words may go as sunlight into our hearts. — Cochise (“Like Ironweed”) Chiricahua Chief
We send our little Indian boys and girls to school, and when they come back talking English, they come back swearing. There is no swear word in the Indian languages, and I haven't yet learned to swear. — Gertrude S. Bonnin (Zitkala-Sa) Yankton Sioux
My young men shall never farm. Men who work the soil cannot dream, and wisdom comes to us in dreams. — Wowoka Paiute
We are all poor because we are all honest. — Red Dog Oglala Sioux
And they shall offer thanks to the earth where all people dwell — To the streams of water, the pools, the springs, and the lakes; to the maize and the fruits — To the medicinal herbs and the trees, to the forest trees for their usefulness, to the animals that serve as food and who offer their pelts as clothing — To the great winds and the lesser winds; to the Thunderers; and the Sun, the mighty warrior; to the moon — To the messengers of the Great Spirit who dwells in the skies above, who gives all things useful to men, who is the source and the ruler of health and life.
Without it our courage fails. Without love we can no longer look out confidently at the world. We turn inward and begin to feed upon our own personalities, and little by little we destroy ourselves.
Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thought nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.
We do not want churches because they will teach us to quarrel about God. .
It is recorded of him that a bruised reed he never broke. Cease, then, to call yourselves Christians, lest you declare to the world your hypocrisy. Cease, too, to call other nations savage, when you are tenfold more the children of cruelty than they. — Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea) Mohawk
from my intercourse with the whites, I have learned that one great principle of their religion is “to do unto others as you wish them to do unto you!” The settlers on our frontiers and on our lands never seem to think of it, if we are to judge by their actions.
The animals had rights — the right of man's protection, the right to live, the right to multiply, the right to freedom, and the right to man's indebtedness — and in recognition of these rights the Lakota never enslaved an animal, and spared all life that was not needed for food and clothing.
Nothing the Great Mystery placed in the land of the Indian pleased the white man, and nothing escaped his transforming hand. Wherever forests have not been mowed down, wherever the animal is recessed in their quiet protection, wherever the earth is not bereft of four-footed life — that to him is an “unbroken wilderness.” But, because for the Lakota there was no wilderness, because nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but friendly, Lakota philosophy was healthy — free from fear and dogmatism. And here I find the great distinction between the faith of the Indian and the white
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But the old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his children close to nature's softening influence.
I was born upon the prairie where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures and where everything drew a free breath. I want to die there, and not within walls.
What! Would you wish that there should be no dried trees in the woods and no dead branches on a tree that is growing old? —A seventy-year-old Huron
Old age was simply a delightful time, when the old people sat on the sunny doorsteps, playing in the sun with the children, until they fell asleep. At last, they failed to wake up. — James Paytiamo
We can say that we are at home everywhere, because we set up our wigwams with ease wherever we go, without asking permission from anyone.
Once I was in Victoria, and I saw a very large house. They told me it was a bank, and that the white men place their money there to be taken care of, and that by and by they got it back, with interest. We are Indians, and we have no such bank; but when we have plenty of money or blankets, we give them away to other chiefs and people, and by and by they return them, with interest, and our hearts feel good. Our way of giving is our bank. — Maquinna Nootka Chief
The white man who is our agent is so stingy that he carries a linen rag in his pocket into which to blow his nose, for fear he might blow away something of value. — Piapot Cree Chief
Civilization has been thrust upon me . . . and it has not added one whit to my love for truth, honesty, and generosity. . . . ” — Chief Luther Standing Bear Oglala Sioux
When you see a new trail, or a footprint you do not know, follow it to the point of knowing .” — Uncheedah The grandmother of Ohiyesa
The first missionaries who came among us were good men, but they were imbued with the narrowness of their age. They branded us as pagans and devil-worshipers, and demanded that we renounce our gods as false. They even told us that we were eternally lost unless we adopted their faith and all its symbols. We of the twentieth century know better. We know that all religious aspiration, all sincere worship, can have but one source and goal. We know that the God of the educated and the God of the child, the God of the civilized and the God of the primitive, is after all the same God; and that this
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The worship of the Great Mystery is silent, solitary, free from all self-seeking. It is silent, because all speech is of necessity feeble and imperfect; therefore the souls of our ancestors ascended to God in wordless adoration.
It is solitary, because we believe that God is nearer to us in solitude, and there are no priests authorized to come between us and our Maker.
We believe profoundly in silence — the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit.
“What is silence?” we will answer, “It is the Great Mystery. The holy silence is God's voice.” If you ask, “What are the fruits of silence?” we will answer, “They are self-control, true courage or endurance, patience, dignity, and reverence. Silence is the cornerstone of character.”
“Guard your tongue in youth,” said the old chief, Wabasha, “and in age you may mature a thought that will be of service to your people.”
We believe that the spirit pervades all creation and that every creature possesses a soul in some degree, though not necessarily a soul conscious of itself. The tree, the waterfall, the grizzly bear, each is an embodied Force, and as such an object of reverence.
We original Americans have generally been despised by our white conquerors for our poverty and simplicity. They forget, perhaps, that our religion forbade the accumulation of wealth and the enjoyment of luxury. To us, as to other spiritually-minded people in every age and race, the love of possessions is a snare, and the burdens of a complex society a source of needless peril and temptation.
All who have lived much out of doors, whether Indian or otherwise, know that there is a magnetic and powerful force that accumulates in solitude but is quickly dissipated by life in a crowd.
Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new sweet earth, and the Great Silence alone.
It has always been our belief that the love of possessions is a weakness to be overcome. Its appeal is to the material part, and if allowed its way it will in time disturb the spiritual balance for which we all strive. Therefore we must early learn the beauty of generosity.
It is her responsibility to endow her child with nature's gifts and powers, for we believe that from the moment of conception to the end of the second year, it is her spiritual influence that counts for most.
Many of us believe that one may be born more than once, and there are some who claim to have full knowledge of a former incarnation. There are also those who believe in a “twin spirit” born into another tribe or race.
To our mind, the professionalism of the pulpit, the paid exhorter, the moneyed church, was an unspiritual and unedifying thing, and it was not until our spirit was broken and our moral and physical constitution undermined by trade, conquest, and strong drink, that the Christian missionaries obtained any real hold upon us.
More than this, even in those white men who professed religion we found much inconsistency of conduct. They spoke much of spiritual things, while seeking only the material. They bought and sold everything: time, labor, personal independence, the love of woman, and even the ministrations of their holy faith!
The old warrior got up and said, “Why, we have followed this law you speak of for untold ages! We owned nothing, because everything is from the Creator. Food was free, land as free as sunshine and rain. Who has changed all this? The white man. And yet he says he is a believer in God! He does not seem to inherit any of the traits of his Father, nor does he follow the example set by his brother Christ.”
Another of the older men, called upon for his views, kept a long silence. Finally, he said, “I have come to the conclusion that this Jesus was an Indian. He was opposed to material acquisition and to great possessions. He was inclined to peace. He was as unpractical as any Indian and set no price upon his labor of love. These are not the principles upon which the white man has founded his civilization. It is strange that he could not rise to these simple principles which were so commonly observed among our people.”
It is my personal belief, after thirty five years' experience of it, that there is no such thing as “Christian civilization.” I believe that Christianity and modern civilization are opposed and irreconcilable, and that the spirit of Christianity and of our ancient religion is essentially the same.
The spirit of the Native people, the first people, has never died. It lives in the rocks and the forests, the rivers and the mountains. It murmurs in the brooks and whispers in the trees. The hearts of these people were formed of the earth that we now walk, and their voice can never be silenced .
The white man has more words to tell you how they look to him, but it does not require many words to speak the truth.
These laws were good. They told us to treat all men as they treated us, that we should never be the first to break a bargain, that it was a disgrace to tell a lie, that we should speak only the truth, that it was a shame for one man to take from another his wife or his property without paying for it.
We were contented to let things remain as the Great Spirit Chief made them. They were not, and would change the rivers and the mountains if they did not suit them.
Words do not pay for my dead people. They do not pay for my country, now overrun by white men. They do not protect my father's grave. They do not pay for all my horses and cattle. Good words will not give me back my children. Good words will not make good the promise of your War Chief General Miles.
Your time of decay may be distant, but it surely will come. For even the white man, whose God talked with him as friend with friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We shall see.
Dead, did I say? There is no death. Only a change of worlds.
