JoJo_theDodo’s Reviews > Centennial > Status Update

“Three things a man’s got to learn to handle—a gun, a glass of whiskey, and a girl. He don’t learn by readin.”

“You give us firewater to drink, and we become a nation of foolish men. Here he danced a few steps imitating a drunken Indian. And while we are drunk you take our women and drive away our buffalo. Once they were more plentiful than our ponies…here where the two rivers meet…now where have they gone?”

“It was remarkable that the French, who followed these precepts in Canada, would enjoy three hundred years of amiable relations with their Indians, while Americans, who were sure the ideas were wrong, would breed only agony with theirs. Perhaps it was because the French wanted trade; the Americans, land.”

“Do not show them on war parties in full regalia. I judge from what I have read that Indians in their everyday occupations looked pretty much like students at the Boulder campus of Colorado University today, except that the Indians may have been somewhat cleaner.”

This is my first time reading Michener and so far it’s giving a National Geographic vibe.