Ten Bears

 

“I was born upon the prairie, where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures and everything drew a free breath. I want to die there and not within walls. I know every stream and every wood between the Rio Grande and the Arkansas. I have hunted and lived over that country. I live like my fathers before me and like them I live happily.” “If the Texans had been kept out of my country there might have been peace… The white man has the country we loved, and we only wish to wander on the prairie until we die…” Ten Bears was old and his influence declining by the time he became known to the white people. He advocated peac and, as a result, lost standing among his own people. When he returned from a trip to Washington in 1872, he was sick and exhausted. His tribe had abandoned him. The Indian agent at Fort Sill gave a bed in the agency office. Here, he died among strangers in an age he did not understand. Only his son attended his death.