"I wore this frock coat to Washington before The War. We wore them because we belonged to the five civilized tribes. We dressed ourselves up like Abraham Lincoln.
You know, we got to see the Secretary of the Interior. And he said, "Boy, you boys sure look civilized."
He congratulated us and he gave us medals for looking so civilized.
We told him about how our land had been stolen and how our people were dying. When we finished he shook our hands and said, "endeavor to persevere!"
They stood us in a line: John Jumper, Chili McIntosh, Buffalo Hump, Jim Buckmark, and me — I am Lone Watie. They took our pictures. And the newspapers said, "Indians vow to endeavor to persevere."
We thought about for a long time. "Endeavor to persevere." And when we had thought about it long enough, we declared war on the Union."
From
The Outlaw Josie Wales.
"Even when your act of resistance is doomed before the fact, sometimes you've just had enough smoke blown up your ass and you need to do something to make your point. Lone Watie's character appeals to me so strongly because his fatalism never stands in the way of his willingness to do what he sees as the right thing."
http://reason.com/blog/2012/08/31/forget-clint-eastwood-what-about-lone-wa#comments
