Many Americans believed in 1867 that the purchase process had been corrupt, but W. H. Dall in 1872 wrote that "...there can be no doubt that the feelings of a majority of the citizens of the United States are in favor of it..." while referring to purchasing the territories of Russia in America. The notion that the purchase was unpopular among Americans is, a scholar wrote 120 years later, "one of the strongest historical myths in American history. It persists despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, and the efforts of the best historians to dispel it", likely in part because it fits American and Alaskan writers' view of the territory as distinct and filled with self-reliant pioneers.