Indian Peace Commission

"I will sign, and if there is anything wrong afterwards I will watch the commissioners, and they will be the first one that I will whip."

"You must have the protection of the President of the United States and his white soldiers or disappear, from the earth...We have not been making war with you. You are at war with us. We have not commenced yet."

"[A]griculture and manufactures should be introduced among them as rapidly as possible; schools should be established which children should be required to attend; their barbarous dialects should be blotted out and the English language substituted."

"If the savage resists, civilization, with the ten commandments in one hand and the sword in the other, demands his immediate extermination."

"If it be said that because they are savages they should be exterminated, we answer that, aside from the humanity of the suggestion, it will prove exceedingly difficult, and if money considerations are permitted to weigh, it costs less to civilize than to kill."

"The object of greatest solicitude should be to break down the prejudices of tribe among the Indians; to blot out the boundary lines which divide them into distinct nations, and fuse them into one homogeneous mass. Uniformity of language will do this -- nothing else will."

"I believe, however, religiously, that the only ultimate solutions of this whole question is, that the Indian shall take his place among other men and accept the march of civilization, as he must ultimately, or there is nothing except his destiny that awaits him, which is extinction."

"[You] must understand that if peace is not now made all efforts on our part to make it are at an end."

"This building of homes for us is all nonsense. We don’t want you to build any for us. We would all die. My country is small enough already. If you build us houses, the land will be smaller. Why do you insist on this?"

"Of course I don’t believe in such things for commissions cannot come into contact with the fighting Indians, and to talk with the old ones is the same old senseless twaddle. It may be that we had better dally along this year and hurry up the railroad, and try to be better prepared next year."

"One thing is demonstrated, either the Indians must give way or we must abandon all west of the Missouri River and confess as you say that forty millions of whites are cowed by a few thousand savages."

"If you follow it, it will bring you herds of cattle and horses, instead of buffalo and antelope, good houses instead of tepees, and lead you to civilization and Christianity, instead of a wild, roving life; you will have confortable homes, and instead of want and misery you will enjoy peace and happiness. We therefore offer you two homes—one on the Missouri, and the other below the Arkansas"

"There is one thing which is not good in your speeches; that is , building us medicine houses. We don’t want any. I want to live and die as I was brought up. I love the open prairie, and I wish you would not insist on putting us on a reservation."