[William Cloud Hicklin]

I'm not entirely sure whether the Dunlendings were the indigenous population of Calenarhon, as opposed to Dunland; the description of Rohan, very steppe-like, doesn't sound to me like a place where anyone other than nomadic herdsmen could live. In "Cirion and Eorl" the place is described as unpopulated; and the one specific place we are told that there was a Dunlendish settlement was the Ring of Isengard, which they surely had no claim to.

The Dunlendings' alleged grievance might have been a piece of Sarumanic propaganda. Or maybe not: but Tolkien on the whole, in both his fiction and his letters, seems to be very much opposed to imperialism, including the British Empire. It would be surprising to me if he had not made more explicit the legitimacy of the Dunlendings' complaint if it had any, as he certainly did with regard to the Woses.