“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

“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

“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