same right as ourselves to inhabit this vast land.

"Yet hear me, friends! 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. They claim this mother of
ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away
from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse.
They compel her to produce out of season, and when sterile she is
made to take medicine in order to produce again. All this is
sacrilege.

"This nation is like a spring freshet; it overruns its banks
and destroys all who are in its path. We cannot dwell side by
side. Only seven years ago we made a treaty by which we were
assured that the buffalo country should be left to us forever. Now
they threaten to take that from us also. My brothers, shall we
submit? or shall we say to them: 'First kill me, before you can
take possession of my fatherland!'"

As Sitting Bull spoke, so he felt, and he had the courage to
stand by his words. Crazy Horse led his forces in the field; as
for him, he applied his energies to state affairs, and by his
strong and aggressive personality contributed much to holding the
hostiles together.