The Earth Shall Weep Quotes

“Some day the earth will weep, she will beg for her life, she will cry with tears of blood. You will make a choice, if you will help her or let her die, and when she dies, you too will die. John Hollow Horn, Oglala Lakota, 1932”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“it seemed so repellent and worthless that some early nineteenth-century maps refer to it as the ‘Great American Desert’.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“In fact, most disturbingly of all, the traffic was largely in the other direction: scores of settlers appeared to prefer ‘savage’ to ‘civilized’ life and, in spite of the threat of severe punishment, deserted Jamestown to live in Native American communities where they could enjoy an ample diet and relative freedom.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“Remarkably, we still have a ‘wild’ Indian’s account of his capture and incarceration. In 1878, when he was an old man, a Kamia called Janitin told an interviewer: I and two of my relatives went down ... to the beach ... we did no harm to anyone on the road, and ... we thought of nothing more than catching and drying clams in order to carry them to our village. While we were doing this, we saw two men on horseback coming rapidly towards us; my relatives were immediately afraid and they fled with all speed, hiding themselves in a very dense willow grove ... As soon as I saw myself alone, I also became afraid ... and ran to the forest ... but already it was too late, because in a moment they overtook me and lassoed and dragged me for a long distance, wounding me much with the branches over which they dragged me, pulling me lassoed as I was with their horses running; after this they roped me with my arms behind and carried me off to the Mission of San Miguel, making me travel almost at a run in order to keep up with their horses, and when I stopped a little to catch my wind, they lashed me with the lariats that they carried, making me understand by signs that I should hurry; after much travelling in this manner, they diminished the pace and lashed me in order that I would always travel at the pace of the horses. When we arrived at the mission, they locked me in a room for a week; the father [a Dominican priest] made me go to his habitation and he talked to me by means of an interpreter, telling me that he would make me a Christian, and he told me many things that I did not understand, and Cunnur, the interpreter, told me that I should do as the father told me, because now I was not going to be set free, and it would go very bad with me if I did not consent in it. They gave me atole de mayz[corn gruel] to eat which I did not like because I was not accustomed to that food; but there was nothing else to eat. One day they threw water on my head and gave me salt to eat, and with this the interpreter told me that I was now Christian and that I was called Jesús: I knew nothing of this, and I tolerated it all because in the end I was a poor Indian and did not have recourse but to conform myself and tolerate the things they did with me. The following day after my baptism, they took me to work with the other Indians, and they put me to cleaning a milpa [cornfield] of maize; since I did not know how to manage the hoe that they gave me, after hoeing a little, I cut my foot and could not continue working with it, but I was put to pulling out the weeds by hand, and in this manner I did not finish the task that they gave me. In the afternoon they lashed me for not finishing the job, and the following day the same thing happened as on the previous day. Every day they lashed me unjustly because I did not finish what I did not know how to do, and thus I existed for many days until I found a way to escape; but I was tracked and they caught me like a fox; there they seized me by lasso as on the first occasion, and they carried me off to the mission torturing me on the road. After we arrived, the father passed along the corridor of the house, and he ordered that they fasten me to the stake and castigate me; they lashed me until I lost consciousness, and I did not regain consciousness for many hours afterwards. For several days I could not raise myself from the floor where they had laid me, and I still have on my shoulders the marks of the lashes which they gave me then.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“The Indians melted away, not because civilization destroyed them,’ growled the historian Francis Parkman in 1867, ‘but because their own ferocity and intractable indolence made it impossible that they should exist in its presence.’ This view echoed the opinion of the early nineteenth-century politician and self-proclaimed authority on Indians Lewis Cass, who believed that some ‘strong exciting’ racial characteristic impelled native people to ‘Their own ceaseless hostilities [which] have, more than any other cause, led to the melancholy depopulation”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“To ease the tension, the Native Americans offered to teach the colonists how to grow maize and construct fishing weirs, but the settlers concentrated on producing tobacco for export to England and continued to rely on their ability to wheedle or bully food out of the Native Americans or - increasingly - simply to take it by force.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“To encourage this process, one state, Virginia, even offered a bounty in 1784 to the ‘white’ partner in Indian/Euro-American marriages.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“We are a small, collective society, where people aren’t encouraged to push themselves forward. And we are surrounded by the most aggressively individualistic society in the world.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“Some tribes, such as the Pimas on the Gila River Reservation in Arizona, have already seen the land they painstakingly irrigated for centuries turn to dust. Scores of others are perilously poised on the brink of disaster. For them, the gains of the last three decades are largely irrelevant, unless and until the water question is resolved: no amount of cultural sensitivity - or even returned land - will, in the long term, help communities so parched that the land itself is unproductive and uninhabitable.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“The treaty must be broken. That’s what happens when progress pushes forward,’ said the director of State Fisheries in Washington.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“The white man adopted two basic approaches ... He systematically excluded blacks from all programmes, policies, social events, and economic schemes ... With the Indian the process was simply reversed ... Indians were ... subjected to the most intense pressure to become white. Laws passed by Congress had but one goal - the Anglo-Saxonization of the Indian... The white man forbade the black to enter his own social and economic system and at the same time force-fed the Indian what he was denying the black. Yet the white man demanded that the black conform to white standards and insisted that the Indian don feathers and beads periodically to perform for him.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“War has been declared on our condition,’ said Mel Thom. To many of us poverty is a way of life. We do not like to be miserable, but our poor conditions have preserved a way of life for a while. Is this just stepping up efforts to absorb us into the mainstream of American life?”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“Native Americans were not prepared to become more prosperous at the cost of losing their identity: We must recognize and point out to others that we do want to live under better conditions, but we want to remember that we are Indians. We want to remain Indian people. We want this country to know that our Indian lands and homes are precious to us. We never want to see them taken away from us ... Many of our friends feel that the Indian’s greatest dream is to be free from second-class citizenship. We as youths have been taught that this freedom from second-class citizenship should be our goal. Let it be heard from Indian youth today that we do not want to be freed from our special relationship with the Federal Government. We only want our relationship between Indian Tribes and the Government to be one of good working relationship. We do not want to destroy our culture, our life that brought us through the period in which Indians were almost annihilated. We do not want to be pushed into the mainstream of American life. The Indian youth fears this, and this fear should be investigated and removed. We want it to be understood by all those concerned with Indian welfare that no people can ever develop when there is fear and anxiety. There is fear among our Indian people today that our tribal relationship with the Federal Government will be terminated soon. This fear must be removed and life allowed to develop by free choices. The policy to push Indians into the mainstream of American life must be re-evaluated. We must have hope. We must have a goal. But that is not what the Indian people want. We will never be able to fully join in on that effort. For any programme or policy to work we must be involved at the grassroots level. The responsibility to make decisions for ourselves must be placed in Indian hands. Any real help for Indian people must take cultural values into consideration. Programmes set up to help people must fit into the cultural framework... Indian tribes need greater political power to act. This country respects power and is based on the power system. If Indian communities and Indian tribes do not have political power we will never be able to hang on to what we have now...”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“amid a cloud of grimly silent fears. The lands of the landed Indians were to be confiscated, they feared, and given to the landless ones. The Indians were to be deprived of their citizenship and of the franchise. The Indians were to be interned, fenced in like buffaloes, compelled back into some (they were told) ancient and outmoded life. The Commissioner, it was said, had bribed a tribal leader, by offering him four sections of land, to support the Indian Reorganization Act.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“Q: You told us a moment ago they were dying off pretty fast? A: Yes, sir, the old people are. Q: Is there any special cause for that? A: Nothing; there is no new disease; I don’t see anything other than the want of hope.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“The emotions of Native Americans themselves are hard to imagine. In under four centuries, disease, warfare, hunger, massacre and despair had reduced their population from an estimated 7-10 million to less than 250,000. As well as costing them their independence and more than ninety per cent of their land, the long struggle against Europeans and Euro-Americans had ruptured their sense of reality.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“Spider Man,”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“My son, my body is returning to my mother earth, and my spirit is going very soon to see the Great Spirit Chief. When I am gone, think of your country. You are the chief of these people. They look to you to guide them. Always remember that your father never sold his country. You must stop your ears whenever you are asked to sign a treaty selling your home. A few years more, and white men will be all around you. They have their eyes on this land. My son, never forget my dying words. This country holds your father’s body. Never sell the bones of your father and your mother.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“A very large amount of money was annually expended in feeding white men and starving Indians ... it invariably happened, when a visitor appeared on the reservations, that the Indians were out in the mountains gathering nuts and berries ...’ Very few of them, indeed, have yet come back ... In the brief period of six years, they have been nearly destroyed by the ... government. What neglect, starvation, and disease have not done, has been achieved by the co-operation of the white settlers in the great work of extermination.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“Waterman describes one attack in vivid, angry detail: A party of whites, in April 1871, pursued a band of Indians with dogs. They located them in a cave across a narrow gulch, and shot a number of them, finally entering the cave itself. Here they found a lot of dried meat, and some small children. The hero of the occasion, being a humane man, a person of fine sensibilities and delicacy of feeling, could not bear to kill these babies - at any rate, not with the heavy 56-calibre Spencer rifle he was carrying. ‘It tore them up too bad.’ So he shot them with his 38-calibre Smith and Wesson revolver. The”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“In December of each year the Tolowa people gathered together at the Axis Mundi to celebrate the creation of the earth. It’s a ten day celebration beginning at the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year ... It would take days for people to arrive and as the population grew, the new Anglo settlement in Crescent City became a little worried, they thought that the Indians were maybe gathering to ... wipe them out or something. Since they had only been in the area less than a year, the settlers didn’t realize that this was a normal annual thing. So the Tolowa people all across the area and the Yurok further south gathered together at the centre of the world, to dance and celebrate ... They danced all night until morning, and then they rested during the day and prepared food and so forth and then in the evening the dance started again ... And each night the dance became a little more elaborate than the night before ... On about the sixth night ... the local militiamen got together, and they drank some whisky and got a good buzz going, and then they got on their horses and went out and surrounded the village, which was one of the larger towns in the area. And of course we all lived in plankhouses made from redwood then. They lined up along a slough which lies in front of the village and then they began to set the buildings on fire, and as the people were trying to escape they were killed. Anybody who jumped into the slough to get away was gunned down into the water. And it happens that I have a great-great-uncle who survived, he was in the sweat house and he slid out and went into the slough and got away, and then he pushed himself southward in the slough. In the morning the entire village was set aflame, and hundreds of people were burned and killed outright. He said the slough was literally red with the blood of the people, and the babies that were found crying were just tossed into the flames to destroy them as well. So several hundred people perished there at ... Yan’daak’$$$$t, and later the place was called Burnt Ranch. And the local people still know where Burnt Ranch is ... The next year, because Axis Mundi was destroyed, the dance was moved to ‘Eechuulet, and they started to dance there and they were attacked again and my great-grandmother said that there were seven layers of bodies in the dance house when they burned it. They just stacked them in and torched the house down and ... burned them up there. The next year, 1855, there was ... a battle at the mouth of the Smith River, where about seventy of our people were killed. But by this time our numbers were drastically reduced...”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“One morning the Pomo lookouts saw a long boat coming up the lake with: ... [a] pole on the bow with [a] red cloth. And several of them came. Every one of the boats had ten to fifteen men ... The next morning the white warriors went across in their long dugouts. The Indians said they would meet them in peace. So when the whites landed, the Indians went to welcome them but the white man was determined to kill them ... One old lady, a Indian told about what she saw while hiding under a bank in under a cover of hanging tuleys [bulrushes]. She said she saw two white men coming with their guns up in the air and on their guns hung a little girl. They brought it to the creek and threw it in the water. And a little later two more men came in the same manner. This time they had a little boy on the end of their guns and also threw it in the water. A little ways from her she said lay a woman shot through the shoulder. She held her little baby in her arms. Two white men came running torge [toward] the woman and baby. They stabbed the woman and the baby and threw both of them over the bank in to the water. She said she heard the woman say, ‘O my baby;’ she said when they gathered the dead, they found all the little ones were killed by being stabbed, and many of the women were also killed [by] stabbing. She said it took them four or five days to gather up the dead: And the dead were all burnt on the east side of the creek... The next morning the soldiers started for Mendocino County ... The Indians wanted to surrender. But the soldiers did not give them time. The soldiers went in the camp and shot them down as if they were dogs. Some of them escaped by going down a little creek leading to the river. And some of them hid in the brush. And those who hid in the brush most of them were killed ... They killed mostly women and children ...”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“Determined to pre-empt further unrest, Oñate promptly sent a punitive force to wage ‘war without quarter’ against the Ácomans. After three days of fierce fighting, some 800 Indian men, women and children were dead, and almost 600 more had been taken prisoner. All the survivors over the age of twelve were condemned to slavery, and the children were given to the friars to be distributed as servants ‘in this kingdom or elsewhere.’ Every man over the age of twenty-five had one of his feet amputated, and two Hopis who had been at Ácoma during the battle lost a hand each and were sent back to their own people as a stern warning.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“Now Montezuma [a Tohono O’odham culture hero] called all the tribes together and said, ‘I am greater than anything that has ever been, greater than anything which exists now, and greater than anything that will ever be. Now, you people shall build me a tall house, floor upon floor upon floor, a house rising into the sky, rising far above this earth into the heavens, where I shall rule as Chief of all the Universe.’ The Great Mystery Power descended from the sky to reason with Montezuma, telling him to stop challenging that which cannot be challenged, but Montezuma would not listen. He said: ‘I am almighty. Let no power stand in my way. I am the Great Rebel. I shall turn this world upside down to my own liking.’ Then good changed to evil. Men began to hunt and kill animals. Disregarding the eternal laws by which humans had lived, they began to fight among themselves. The Great Mystery Power tried to warn Montezuma and the people by pushing the sun farther away from the earth and placing it where it is now. Winter, snow, ice, and hail appeared, but no one heeded this warning. In the meantime Montezuma made the people labour to put up his many-storied house, whose rooms were of coral and jet, turquoise and mother-of-pearl. It rose higher and higher, but just as it began to soar above the clouds far into the sky, the Great Mystery Power made the earth tremble. Montezuma’s many-storied house of precious stones collapsed into a heap of rubble. When that happened, the people discovered that they could no longer understand the language of the animals, and the different tribes, even though they were all human beings, could no longer understand each other. Then Montezuma shook his fists toward the sky and called: ‘Great Mystery Power, I defy you. I shall fight you. I shall tell the people not to pray or make sacrifices of corn and fruit to the Creator. I, Montezuma, am taking your place!’ The Great Mystery Power sighed, and even wept, because the one he had chosen to lead mankind had rebelled against him. Then the Great Mystery resolved to vanquish those who rose against him. He sent the locust flying far across the eastern waters, to summon a people in an unknown land, people whose faces and bodies were full of hair, who rode astride strange beasts, who were encased in iron, wielding iron weapons, who had magic hollow sticks spitting fire, thunder, and destruction. The Great Mystery Power allowed these bearded, pitiless people to come in ships across the great waters out of the east - permitted them to come to Montezuma’s country, taking away Montezuma’s power and destroying him utterly. From Montezuma and the Great Flood”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“Even though only a minority of the Ani-Yunwiya had taken up arms, the Americans made no distinction between ‘hostile’ and ‘friendly’ Indians and indiscriminately destroyed fifty of the Nation’s towns.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“Only by rejecting alcohol, Christianity and other impurities introduced by the ‘whites’, and returning to their own rituals and ceremonies, could Native Americans find the strength needed to repel the invader.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“Where today are the Pequots? Where the Narragansetts, the Mohawks, the Pocanets and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and oppression of the white man...”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“The Hotinonshonni themselves, however, explain the masks through stories which emphasize their meaning rather than their chronological origin.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“events have to be seen not in chronological relation to each other but in terms of a complex, coherent understanding of the world, rooted in the origin story, in which time, space, spiritual entities and living beings all interact.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

“The American land was more like a widow than a virgin. Europeans did not find a wilderness here; rather, however involuntarily, they made one. Jamestown, Plymouth, Salem, Boston, Providence, New Amsterdam, Philadelphia - all grew upon sites previously occupied by Indian communities ... The so-called settlement of America was a resettlement, a reoccupation of a land made waste by the diseases and demoralization introduced by the newcomers.”
― James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America