1929: The American Indian has had the fate of many conquered peoples, in that he has been made a hero in fiction after being made a villain and a victim in fact.

Indian Rights

1929, Nov 2  Lebanon Daily News 

The American Indian has had the fate of many conquered peoples, in that he has been made a hero in fiction after being made a villain and a victim in fact. The earliest white settlers, indeed, talked for a time about saving the natives fro the kingdom of heaven,  but they soon came to the conclusion that the best way to do that was to send the redskins there.
     The gunpowder method of conversion simplified the problem of who was to occupy the country which had been occupied by the Indians. But when the original Americans had ceased, by becoming more or less extinct, to be any particular menace, the chivalrous disposition of the conquerors asserted itself. They discovered that the sons of the forest had been true children of nature, with all the virtues which the eighteenth century sentimentally ascribed to natural men, still uncorrupted by the dread influence of civil institutions.
     In dealing with the Indian question, which has come to the fore in Washington, the country should not treat it as merely a matter of conservation, analogous to the conversation of the buffalo and preservation of virgin forests and other natural wonders. The white man's superiority complex is likely to cause him to look upon his copper-skinned brothers as curious to be preserved only that paleface curiosity may be satisfied and in the interests of anthropology.

1929, Nov 2  Lebanon Daily News