{"id":1193,"date":"2012-03-18T13:16:56","date_gmt":"2012-03-18T17:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/?p=1193"},"modified":"2021-08-28T18:39:20","modified_gmt":"2021-08-28T22:39:20","slug":"does-this-really-sound-like-sitting-bull","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/does-this-really-sound-like-sitting-bull\/","title":{"rendered":"Does This Really Sound Like Sitting Bull?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"SittingAnother quote meme going around on the Internet claims to be from Sitting Bull<\/a> (Tatanka Iyotake), the famous Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux chief. A fascinating man in a difficult time, and a source of inspiration today. He was brave, intelligent and, from all accounts, wise. So when I read the quote below, I was torn. It’s a good comment, one that sounds like it should come from a wise man. But was that wise man really<\/em> Sitting Bull?<\/p>\n

Or perhaps these words are from someone else. There are many of these false quotations online, words that have been appropriated and misattributed by the many slow and lazy Web users who can’t be bothered to confirm the source. From Shakespeare to Einstein, I’ve found hundreds of bad quotes that spread around the Net, becoming memes. Popular “quote” sites that allow users to post quotations without affirming their validity are partly to blame, too. Keep in mind most of these are clickbait sites for advertisers, NOT credible quotation sources.<\/p>\n

But even if the words are wise, attributing them to the wrong person just contributes to the general dumbing down of everyone who reads them. So who actually said:<\/p>\n

For us, warriors are not what you think of as warriors. The warrior is not someone who fights, because no one has the right to take another\u2019s life. The warrior, for us, is one who sacrifices himself for the good of others. His task is to take care of the elderly, the defenseless, those who cannot provide for themselves, and above all, the children, the future of humanity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This one is repeated by Native Americans<\/a> and on native sites as well, so perhaps it has some validity, but none of them ascribe any source to it, either.<\/p>\n

I have yet to find any<\/strong> source that shows when or where Sitting Bull actually said it. So until then, it remains classified as a bad meme and likely by someone else.<\/p>\n

I suspect it’s more wishful thinking than accurate attribution. We want<\/em> our cultural, folk and personal heroes to sound wise and inspiring, so we attribute to them something that we believe they would have, could have, or should have said, often without checking back to be sure they actually<\/em> said it. And when we do it online, we create a meme that gets spread like those crazy emails about Microsoft promising us millions if we just forward it to everyone we know.<\/p>\n

Wikiquotes<\/a> \u2014 a generally reliable source \u2014 has several quotations from Sitting Bull, all properly attributed. This is not among them, and is not even among the many unsourced quotes it lists. The quote itself is not found anywhere on WikiQuotes by any other author.<\/p>\n

My printed sources offer no help. Neither the Oxford nor the Penguin dictionaries of quotations have anything from Sitting Bull. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (15th\/125th anniversary edition) has a single statement Sitting Bull made that reads,<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat treaty have the Sioux made with the white man that we have broken? Not one. What treaty have the white man ever made with us that they have kept? Not one. When I was a boy the Sioux owned the world; the sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?… What law have I broken? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am a Sioux; because I was born where my father lived; because I would die for my people and my country?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The ellipses says that this is a partial quote and that some of the words have been left out. That, however, is the only printed sources I have for any<\/em> Sitting Bull quotes. There are quotes attributed to Sitting Bull to be found in some of the older books (many published pre-1920) digitized in the Internet Archives<\/a>. None of them I have found (yet) match the quotation at the top of this page. However, their accuracy is questionable since they mostly seem to be second- or third-hand. Here are two from one source I’ve culled<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“Do you not see that the whites on the reservation are afraid of you? Why do you pray to great Wakantanka to send the Saviour on earth and bring about a change when the remedy lies in your own hands? Be men, not children. You have a perfect right to dance upon your own reservation as much as you please, and you should exercise this right, even if you find it necessary to use your guns. Be brave, and the great and good Wakantanka will aid your arms. Be cowards, and he will be ashamed of you.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

God Almighty made me an Indian, and he did not make me an agency Indian, and I do not intend to be one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s a quote from another 19th century source<\/a>:<\/p>\n

This is not my doings nor these men’s. They are fighting because they were commanded to fight. We have killed their leader, let them go. I call on the Great Spirit to witness what I say. We did not want to fight. Long Hair sent us word that he was coming to fight us, and we had to defend ourselves and our wives and children. If this command had not been given we could have cut Reno’s command to pieces, as we did Custer’s. No warrior knew Custer in the fight. We did not know him, dead or alive. When the fight was over the chiefs gave orders- to look for the long-haired chief among the dead, but no chief with long hair could be found.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whether these are actual quotes, or paraphrased by the 19th-century writers to better suit their personal, biased views of the ‘primitive savages’ they wrote about, I have no way to ascertain. I suspect the latter.<\/p>\n

I personally suspect the source of the original quotation is another writer. Perhaps from one of Dan Millman’s “peaceful warrior”<\/a> books or from one of Carlos Castaneda’s<\/a> Don Juan books. Both have written about warriors, and the end bit about “…the children, the future of humanity” seems more suited to the style of these writers than to the few actual quotations of Sitting Bull’s I’ve read.<\/p>\n

A third option is the inspirational\/spiritual writer Paul Coelho<\/a>, possibly from the Manual of the Warrior of the Light<\/em> (1997) or possibly his novel, The Valkyries. Coelho founded the Paulo Coelho Institute, which provides aid to children and elderly people with financial problems. Coelho wrote on his blog<\/a>,<\/p>\n

“To the warriors of light, there is no such thing as impossible love.
\nThey don\u2019t allow themselves to be intimidated by silence, or by rejection.
\nThey know that \u2013 behind the icy mask people wear \u2013 there is a heart of fire.
\nThat is why the warriors risk more than others.
\nThey tirelessly seek love \u2013 even if this means hearing, many times over, the word \u2018no\u2019, returning home defeated, feeling rejected in body and soul.
\nWarriors don\u2019t allow themselves to be discouraged. Without love, living has no meaning.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Coelho, Castaneda and Millman all write in a similar New-Age style that is a lot more like the quotation in question than anything I’ve read that can be verified as being by Sitting Bull. Similar sentiments to this and the quotation in question are expressed in different wording on several martial arts\/bushido, New Age and even gaming sites, as well.<\/p>\n

Somehow, in the New Age mythology, warriors have gone from armed and dangerous soldiers who killed their enemies, fought and defended their lands and people with their lives, to happy, wise folks helping old ladies cross the street, rescuing cats from trees, and helping at food banks.<\/p>\n

I don’t think Sitting Bull would have recognized that transformation.\u00a0It’s not a sentiment I would ascribe to many military leaders. And Sitting Bull was certainly one of those.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Another quote meme going around on the Internet claims to be from Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake), the famous Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux chief. A fascinating man in a difficult time, and a source of inspiration today. He was brave, intelligent and, from all accounts, wise. So when I read the quote below, I was torn. It’s a good comment, one that sounds like it should come from a wise man. But was that wise man really Sitting Bull? Or perhaps these words are from someone else. There are many of these false quotations online, words that have been appropriated and misattributed \u2026…… click below for more \u2193<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,73,69],"tags":[71,47,48],"class_list":["post-1193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-language-grammar","category-internet-memes","tag-internet","tag-meme","tag-quotation"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":true,"total_views":39719,"today_views":0},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1193"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27159,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193\/revisions\/27159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}