Susette LaFlesche Tibbles

The people who were once owners of this soil ask you for their liberty, and law is liberty.

For wrongs like these we have no redress whatever. We have no protection from the law.

So many seem to think that Indians fight because they delight in being savage and are bloodthirsty.

We are human beings; God made us as well as you

It seems to us sometimes that the government treats us with less consideration than it does even the dogs.

The tribe has been robbed of thousands of dollars' worth of property, and the government shows no disposition to return what belongs to them.

The whole Ponca tribe were rapidly advancing in civilization; cultivated their farms, and their schoolhouses and churches were well filled, when suddenly they were informed that the government required their removal to Indian Territory.

Peaceful revolutions are slow but sure. It takes time to leaven a great unwieldy mass like this nation with the leavening ideas of justice and liberty, but the evolution is all the more certain in its results because it is so slow.

A struggle for existence is not a decent living. A man or woman or child may die of starvation in a city teeming with plenty. Only human life is concerned.

The legislation of the government has been directed rather to the protection of the rights of money and property than to the best good of the citizen.