Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007 TV Movie)

August Schellenberg: Sitting Bull

Photos 

Quotes 

• Col. Nelson Miles : Sitting Bull requested this council. We await his words.

  Sitting Bull : Take your soldiers out of here. They scare the game away.

  Col. Nelson Miles : Very well, sir. Tell me, then: how far away should I take my men?

  Sitting Bull : You must take them out of our lands.

  Col. Nelson Miles : What precisely are your lands?

  Sitting Bull : These are the lands where my people lived before you whites first came.

  Col. Nelson Miles : I don't understand. We whites were not your first enemies. Why don't you demand back the land in Minnesota where the Chippewa and others forced you from years before?

  Sitting Bull : The Black Hills are a sacred land given to my people by Wakan Tanka.

  Col. Nelson Miles : How very convenient to cloak your claims in spiritualism. And what would you say to the Mormons and others who believe that their God has given to them Indian lands in the West?

  Sitting Bull : I would say they should listen to Wakan Tanka.

  Col. Nelson Miles : No matter what your legends say, you didn't sprout from the plains like the spring grasses. And you didn't coalesce out of the ether. You came out of the Minnesota woodlands armed to the teeth and set upon your fellow man. You massacred the Kiowa, the Omaha, the Ponca, the Oto and the Pawnee without mercy. And yet you claim the Black Hills as a private preserve bequeathed to you by the Great Spirit.

  Sitting Bull : And who gave us the guns and powder to kill our enemies? And who traded weapons to the Chippewa and others who drove us from our home?

  Col. Nelson Miles : Chief Sitting Bull, the proposition that you were a peaceable people before the appearance of the white man is the most fanciful legend of all. You were killing each other for hundreds of moons before the first white stepped foot on this continent. You conquered those tribes, lusting for their game and their lands, just as we have now conquered you for no less noble a cause.

  Sitting Bull : This is your story of my people!

  Col. Nelson Miles : This is the truth, not legend. Crazy Horse has surrendered... with his entire band. And by his surrender, he says to you and your people that you are defeated. And by ceding the Black Hills to us, so say Red Cloud and the other chiefs, who demand that you end this war and take your place on the reservation.

  Sitting Bull : Red Cloud is no longer a chief. He is a woman you have mounted and had your way with. Do not speak to me of Red Cloud!

  Col. Nelson Miles : I suppose *you* are the only chief then. Sitting Bull is king of all the Indians! Now, humility is one of the four virtues of the Sioux chief. Sitting Bull shows his true nature now.

  Sitting Bull : I have had my say with you.

  Col. Nelson Miles : And I have had my say with you.

  Sitting Bull : Then we will have a fight.

  Col. Nelson Miles : So be it.

• Gall : There were no early crops. Now there will be no late crops. Does it seem to you that our coffee rations are smaller?

  Sitting Bull : Why do you tell lies about my part in the fight at the Little Bighorn?

  Gall : It was Agent McLaughlin. You angered him. He made me say these things against you.

  Sitting Bull : How can this be? All our lives, we were like brothers, sharing meat when we had it. When we had no meat, and when food was but a day's ride to an agency, we could not be made to take from the whites!

  Gall : I will go and speak straight and set things right.

  Sitting Bull : These words cannot be put back. I have said all I have to say.

  Gall : My brother, listen to me. Many would have taken from the whites for all those years, but they did not because you did not. I did not because you did not. Before you came, I was Big Man here. But now you've come and you do nothing. You sit and tell stories while I work my fields. You go with Cody, you write your name on a piece of paper and you take money - money that I must sweat for. I do not understand why you feel so honored by these things. I do not understand why you've come, because to me you are Sitting Bull, our leader who would never surrender. That is all I have to say.

• Sitting Bull : Hear me, then for one last time. They mean to take our land away from us. You may say, "They wish to give us land. This patch to you, this patch to you." But here is the truth - each patch is for a man and all generations that follow him. And they know that this land cannot feed but one generation, not even so much as that.

  McLaughlin : All right, you've had your say.

  Gall : Do not interrupt.

  Sitting Bull : You teach our children the words of your God, "Be fruitful and multiply." But it seems these words are not meant for the Indian. For what kind of man would take a wife and have children he cannot feed? No Indian man. Not a Lakota, not an Arikara, not a Crow. You would have us cut off our balls and end our race right here on a patch of land on which nothing can live, and that will not happen! I have spoken.

  Henry Dawes : We did not put you on this land. Red Cloud surrendered - he made peace with the government. Have you forgotten the bloodshed that came before?

  Chief Red Cloud : Sitting Bull is a great leader. I believe this, no matter that the whites see us men all as the same. But he did not sit with us in the council those many snows ago when our reservation was made. He did not sit with us in the next council when these borders that we were told were like marks in stone were moved. And the Black Hills and our hunting lands were taken from us. Sitting Bull might have had his say, but such was his suspicion of the whites, such was his pride. I say today for all ears within hearing that if Sitting Bull had spoken the way he speaks today, I would not have touched that pen. I will not touch your pen to your paper. I will not touch it to your red paper, I will not touch it to your black paper. The white man will not see my mark again on his paper for the rest of my days on this earth.