William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1

A Red man cannot understand a White man's law.

Take the last decision of Chief Justice Waite and his learned brethren of the Supreme Court, and ask how either a Creek or Cherokee, not to say an Osage or a Kickapoo, is to comprehend such law? Years ago the Indians, as the weaker party, became subject to a general law of removal by the State from one point to another. If their hunting grounds were wanted by White farmers, they were forced to move; but their right and property in the soil were not denied, and something like a fair exchange of lands was always offered to them. On quitting Georgia, the Cherokees obtained a better country on the Verdigris. In place of their old home, the Creeks and Choctaws got hunting-grounds along the Arkansas. The Senecas got the Alleghany; the Oneidas, Green Bay. The Omahas received lands on the Missouri, the Crows on Yellowstone, the Shoshones on the Snake. No tribe was ever driven from home, except on promise of a finer campingground elsewhere. From Penn and Ogle, therefore,