Just a beautiful quote
 

"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 grovel 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 no thing, 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 the 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."
Chief Tecumseh, Shawnee Nation

He made a damn fine little gas engine as well.

And a follow up:

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.
Chief Tecumseh, Shawnee Nation

lol :p

They gave us something else: the basis for our Democratic experiment. Benjamin Franklin wrote his Albany Plan of Union based on the urgings of Indian leaders who were tired of dealing with multiple bickering colonies (it was rejected, but the idea persisted). Native thinkers were influencing Eurpoean idealists*, and the Europeans influenced the Americans. The unique, merit-based system of government used successfully by millions of Native Americans was the envy of progressive thinkers everywhere. Of course, we gave all credit to the Europeans, none to the "savage" Natives. Primary historical sources clearly acknowledge this, our modern "history" textbooks do not. Why do you think we dressed up like "Indians" at the Tea Party? To scare the British? No, because Native American motifs were a symbol of the freedom we aspired to. Ironic.

*Yes, Natives had gotten around to Europe before we arrived, including good old Squanto, who had crossed the Atlantic as many as six times before he returned home to Plymouth Rock.

Awesome.

That really tickled me for some reason. Well done.

Yes, the Iroquois confederation was a good model for our government. That's the same Iroquois confederation that sold Willie Penn the land for Pennsylvania..... right out from under the tribes that lived on that land.

Oh, give me a break. They dressed as indians because reprisals on Bostonians was likely, since they controlled them... and reprisals on Indians impossible, for the British.

I doubt the settlers knew what motifs of the Indians were, except the ones in their blankets.

Not as thorough, yet somehow much more succinct, I like this quote from Yau-Man Chan: "Love many, trust few, and hurt no one."

If you had to write in Chinese, you'd condense it too.

ROTFLMAO! :D

Is that fact, or your opinion? I thought they dressed up as Indians to to show that Indians supported the colonist's cause against taxation.

The Indians didn't give a shit about taxation, they weren't taxed. They lived apart and only traded with the colonists.

William Penn wrote the first version of Frame of Government for Pennsylvania while he was still in England (1682).
Ben Franklin (along with Thom Paine) was a big fan of Willie Penn.