The environment does not determine the character of human culture; it — Peter Farb

"To do nothing now is to let our children lament that they never knew the magnificent diversity of humankind because our generation let disappear those cultures that might have taught it to them."

"Perhaps we, who for so long regarded ourselves as bringers of light to the shadowy recesses of North America, will finally admit that there is much about which the Indians can illuminate us."

"The movement known as the Ghost Dance first appeared around 1870... soon after the Union Pacific Railroad completed its first transcontinental run. ...that event inspired the vision of the prophet Wodziwob, who declared that a big train was coming to bring back dead ancestors... a cataclysm would swallow up all the whites and leave behind their goods for his followers."

"Almost every messianic movement in the world came into being as a result of hallucinatory visions of a prophet. One point must be emphasized about the prophet of a messianic movement: He is not a schizophrenic, as was so long assumed. A schizophrenic with religious paranoia will state that he is God, Jesus, the Great Spirit, or some other supernatural being. The prophet, on the other hand, never states that he is supernatural—only that he has been in contact with supernatural powers. (Of course, after his death, his disciples tend to deify him or at least give him saintly status.)"

"...the intensity of the indignation was in direct proportion to a Whites distance from the Indian. On the frontier, the Indian was regarded as a besotted savage; but along the eastern seaboard, where the Spaniards, Dutch, English, and later Americans had long since exterminated all the Indians, philosophers and divines began to defend the Red Man."

"The members of a society do not make conscious choices in arriving at a particular way of life. Rather, they make unconscious adaptations. ...they know only that a particular choice works, even though it may appear bizarre to an outsider."