The federal judiciary still presents the traditional account of this speech as part of its Native American Heritage Month material.

The scene is extraordinary.

It is also a place where viral-history writing can easily become careless.

The safe historical approach is not to pretend we possess a perfect modern stenographic transcript proving every famous sentence exactly as later published.

The judiciary’s own retelling introduces the scene as something “it is said” occurred, reflecting the fact that the famous wording comes through historical accounts.

That does not mean the speech should be discarded.