When I was a young man and went to war, I thought that might be the last time, and I would return no more. Now I am here among you; you may kill me if you please; I can die but once; and it is all one to me, now or another time.

Speech at Point Pleasant, on his mission to warn the settlers that other Shawnee intended to attack them, just prior to his death (November 1777), as quoted in "Cornstalk, the Shawanee Chief" by Rev. William Henry Foote, in The Southern Literary Messenger Vol. 16, Issue 9, (September 1850) pp. 533-540