Only to the white man was nature a 'wilderness'.

"Civilization" has been thrust upon me since the days of the reservations, and it has not added one whit to my sense of justice, to my reverence for the rights of life, to my love for truth, honesty, and generosity, or to my faith in Wakan Tanka, God of the Lakotas.

White men seem to have difficulty in realizing that people who live differently from themselves still might be traveling the upward and progressive road of life.

For the Lakota there was no wilderness. Nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but friendly.

Certain small ways and observances sometimes have connection with large and more profound ideas.

The old Lakota was wise. He knew that a man's heart away from nature becomes hard.

The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew into the air came to rest upon the earth and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing.