CHIEF TECUMSEH (updated)..................Thunderhead

One of my Native American friends gave this to me a long time ago, and I just found it and thought I'd share it. People have always said I'm different. I am different, because I embrace my native upbringing more than my white one, and this really explains much of what I believe:



"So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and bow to none. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and nothing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home."



"No tribe has the right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers.... sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Didn't the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children? The way, the only way to stop this evil is for the red man to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was first, and should be now, for it was never divided." We gave them forest-clad mountains and valleys full of game, and in return what did they give our warriors and our women? Rum, trinkets, and a grave.

Brothers -- My people wish for peace; the red men all wish for peace; but where the white people are, there is no peace for them, EXCEPT it be on the bosom of our mother.

Where today are the Pequot? Where today are the Narrangansett, the Mohican, the Pakanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun."

Chief Tecumseh, Shawnee

I almost forgot to say, I do not believe that people today are responsible for what people did then. I'm mostly Irish, and obviously not all of my ancestors connected with Natives at all. But what I'm saying is I believe we should be accepting of others with kindness and respect, and that can make up for a lot.

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