One of the myths by which we Americans are prone to hide our real virtues and make our idealism look as hard-boiled as possible.

From The Legal Conscience Selected Papers Of Felix S. Cohen by Lucy Kramer Cohen.  Felix S. Cohen, was the primary legal architect of FDR's Indian New Deal. 

Fortunately for the security of American real estate titles, the business of securing cessions of Indian titles has been, on the whole, conscientiously pursued by the Federal Government, as long as there has been a Federal Government. The notion that America was stolen from the Indians is one of the myths by which we Americans are prone to hide our real virtues and make our idealism look as hard-boiled as possible. We are probably the one great nation in the world that has consistently sought to deal with an aboriginal population on fair and equitable terms. We have not always succeeded in this effort but our deviations have not been typical. 

 

It is, in fact, difficult to understand the decisions on Indian title or to appreciate their scope and their limitations if one views the history of American land settlement as a history of wholesale robbery.