In the late 19th century, the US government’s policy toward Native American nations evolved from using Indian agents as liaisons to a more structured (and heavily restricted) reservation system. Most of the Native American nations that the US encountered earlier in its history did not fare even as well as the western nations consigned to reservations: Many eastern groups were simply erased from history by disease and violence. However, the reservation system was not really a step forward; it represented the extension of a cruel set of policies intent on supplanting Native American cultures with a Euro-American cultural identity.

The development of the United States’ so-called “Indian policy” in the late 19th century was beset with problems, not the least of which was the fact that the encounters Brown describes coincided with major historical events that loomed larger in the national consciousness. The Civil War and Reconstruction dominated public attention for much of the period in question, thus casting “Indian policy” as a lesser concern for the general public. (Brown includes chronological lists of other such events in national life at the beginning of each chapter, thus illustrating how many other issues vied for the American public’s attention at the time.