“The Indians will vanish” has been the talk of the older Indians
ever since the white people first came to mingle among them.
They seemed to prophesy that the coming of the white man would
not be for their good and when the step toward their removal to
a country to the west was just beginning, it was the older Indians
who remarked and talked about themselves by saying “Now, the
Indian is now on the road to disappearance.” This had reference to
their leaving of their ways, their familiar surroundings where their
customs were performed, their medicine, their hunting grounds
and their friends.

When they had reached their new homes in the Indian territory,
their conversations were about their old homes and they said, “We
have started on the road that leads to our disappearance and we
are facing the evening of our existence and are nearly at the end
of the trail that we trod when we were forced to leave our homes
in Alabama and Georgia. In time, perhaps our own language will
not be used but that will be after our days.”

SOURCE: Interview with Siah Hicks (Creek), November 17, 1937,
           Indian-Pioneer History (Oklahoma Historical Society), 
                                                                                     Public Domain