Migration 7

We have now to deal with another people, small and feeble when our forefathers first met with them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possessions is a disease in them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break, but the poor may not! They have a religion in which the poor worship, but the rich will not! They even take tithes of the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule.

Bob Blaisdell (2014): The Dover Anthology of American Literature. From 1865 to 1922. p. 77.

Sitting Bull (ca. 1831-1890) whose actual name was Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake. He was a leader and healer of the Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux.

Today’s USA was populated by European migrants as a settler colony. Here, Sitting Bull was speaking as a Native American about the experience of genocidal policies during that colonisation. The Sioux leader, who is admired to this day, mourned the dispossession of the Native Americans. At the same time, through the analysis it presents, the quote also provides information about how Sitting Bull perceived and analysed settlement policies, mass murder and wars, as well as the new culture that was brought to his country with the white man.

*Dee Brown (1970): Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. An Indian History of the American West. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

1875