“It is only just passing from one country to another.”

Calm acceptance of mortality as a simple transition rather than an ending · Letter on approaching death

• Acceptance
• Death
• Faith

“As soon as I began, it seemed impossible to write fast enough—I wrote faster than I would write a letter—two thousand to three thousand words in a morning, and I cannot help it.”

Describing the almost compulsive creative force that drove the novel · On writing Ramona

• Creativity
• Inspiration
• Writing

“My Century of Dishonor and Ramona are the only things I have done of which I am glad. They will live, and they will bear fruit.”

Reflecting on the works she believed would endure and continue her reform cause · Letter near the end of her life

• Advocacy
• Legacy
• Writing

“From my death bed I send you message of heartfelt thanks for what you have already done for the Indians. I ask you to read my Century of Dishonor. I am dying happier for the belief I have that it is your hand that is destined to strike the first steady blow toward lifting this burden of infamy from our country and righting the wrongs of the Indian race.”

Her final appeal for justice for Native Americans, written as she faced death · Letter to President Grover Cleveland, 1885

• Advocacy
• Death
• Justice

“The woman who creates and sustains a home, and under whose hands children grow up to be strong and pure men and women, is a creator second only to God.”

Affirming the creative dignity and moral power of domestic life and motherhood · Essay, Bits About Home Matters

• Creation
• Home
• Motherhood

“I am going to write a novel, in which will be set forth some Indian experiences in a way to move people’s hearts. People will read a novel when they will not read serious books.”

Explaining her decision to turn from documentary protest to storytelling for greater impact · Letter, November 1883

• Advocacy
• Fiction
• Writing

“If I could write a story that would do for the Indian one-hundredth part what ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ did for the Negro, I would be thankful the rest of my life.”

On her ambition to use fiction to awaken public conscience about Native American injustice · Letter (as commonly attributed)

• Advocacy
• Justice
• Writing

“I shall be found with ‘Indians’ engraved on my brain when I am dead. A fire has been kindled within me, which will never go out.”

Expressing the lifelong passion for Native American rights that overtook her later years · Letter to Charles Dudley Warner, 21 December 1879

• Advocacy
• Justice
• Passion

“The United States has been, and is, the greatest wrong-doer to the Indian.”

A direct condemnation of national responsibility for injustice · A Century of Dishonor

• Truth
• War

“The Indian has been made to feel that he is an alien in the land which was once all his own.”

Evoking dispossession and the loss of belonging · A Century of Dishonor

• Solitude
• War

“There is no wrong which can be done to a human being which is not done to an Indian.”

Insisting on the universal human significance of Native American suffering · A Century of Dishonor

• Truth
• War

“The history of the Indian is a history of wrongs.”

A concise expression of her moral and political concern for Native peoples · A Century of Dishonor

• Truth
• War

“It is a sorrowful thing to think of, that the United States has never kept one treaty made with the Indians.”

A forceful indictment of broken promises and historical injustice · A Century of Dishonor

• Truth
• War