Washington said, in one of his messages to Congress, “We are more enlightened and more powerful than the Indian nations; we are therefore bound in honor to treat them with kindness, and even with generosity.” But this virtuous and high-minded policy has not been followed. The rapacity of the settlers is usually backed by the tyranny of the government.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume I (1835; Henry Reeve/Francis Bowen, trans., 1898)