After the Civil War, the federal government, to make way for
the railroads and the closing of the American frontier by white settlers,
confined American Indians on reservations in the West.
The bison, or buffalo, an animal that once had swarmed the great plains in
the tens of millions and fed and clothed generations of Plains Indians was all but
extinguished by white settlers and buffalo hunters.
Indians now have no choice but
to live off the paltry largesse of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Traditional tribal cultures were endangered.
>> Richard Henry Pratt, a former colonel in the Union Army,
believed that Native Americans could survive only if
they were assimilated into the white mainstream.
He called it, quote, killing the Indian to save the man.