Words to live by (oratory)

[minionofmidas]

Thaóyate Dúta¹ is not a coward, and he is not a fool²! When did he run away from his enemies? When did he leave his braves³ behind him on the warpath and turn back to his tepee? When he ran away from your enemies, he walked behind on your trail with his face to the Ojibwas⁴ and covered your backs as a she-bear covers her cubs! Is Thaóyate Dúta without scalps? Look ath is war feathers! Behold the scalp locks of your enemies hanging there on his lodgepoles! You call him a coward? Thaóyate Dúta is not a coward, and he is not a fool. Braces, you are like little children; you know not what you are doing.
You are full of the White man's devilwater. You are like dogs in the Hot Moon⁵ when they run mad and snap at their own shadows. We are only little herds of buffalo left scattered; the great herds that once covered the prairies are no more. See! The White men are like the locusts when they fly so thick that the whole sky is a snowstorm. You may kill one - two - ten; yes, as many as there are leaves in the forest yonder, and their brothers will not miss them. Kill one - two - ten, and ten times ten will come to kill you. Count your fingers all day long and White men with guns in their hands will come faster than you can count.
Yes, they fight among themselves⁶ - away off. Do you hear the thunder of their big guns? No; it would take you two moons to run down to where they are fighting, and all the way your path would be among white soldiers as thick as tamaracks in the swamps of the Ojibwas. Yes, they fight among themselves, but if you strike at them they will all turn on you and devor you and your women and little children just as the locusts in their time fall on the trees and devour all the leaves in one day.
You are fools. You cannot see the face of your chief; your eyes are full of smoke. You cannot hear his voice; your ears are full of roaring waters. Braves, you are little children - you are fools. You will die like the rabbits when the hungry wolves hunt them in the Hard Moon of January.

Thaóyate Dúta is not a coward. He will die with you.


¹ Known to the Whites as Little Crow. I substituted a scientific spelling for the source's.
² Probably "but he is not a fool either" would have been a better translation for his (Dakota) words.
³ Rather a dated usage, but it was standard well into the twentieth century for what we'd now call an Indian "warrior".
⁴ Source has "Ojibway". Of course American Officialese still uses "Chippewa" and hyper-pc-speech now prefers "Ojibwe" or even "Anishiinabe", but Ojibwa is the most standard form.
⁵month
⁶this was spoken in 1862.