The Shifts in the Federal Government's Policy Toward Native Americans from the 1830s to the 1930s.

In the beginning, the Native Americans were moved westward to make more land available for American settlers. The initial policy used by the federal government towards Native Americans was one of removal. The United States had two conflicting policies towards the Native American population which was assimilation and removal. Assimilation would attempt to encourage Native Americans to conform to American ways to survive and the federal government even funded missionaries to Christianize and educate native people. The government's second policy, removal, dismissed the possibility of assimilating Native Americans. It sought to make Indians leave the lands they had in the East and relocate west of the Mississippi River. However, between the 1830 and the 1930s the westward movement by white Americans would collide with the Indians resulting in removal over assimilation. Their conflicts with the U.S. government, in the late 19th century, were partly the result of white Americans having little understanding of the Plain's people's loose tribal organization and nomadic lifestyle. The shifts in the federal government's policy toward Native Americans from the 1830s to the 1930s went from the Reservation Policy, to the Dawes Severalty Act, and lead up to the Indian Reorganization Act.

President Andrew Jackson's policy of removing eastern Native Americans to the West, in the 1830s, was based on the belief that lands west of the Mississippi would permanently remain "Indian country." In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act to remove Indians to the West. All Indians in the East were removed by 1840 after Jackson's administration negotiated ninety-four removal treaties. As wagon trains rolled westward on the Oregon Trail, and plans were made for building a transcontinental railroad, this expectation soon was proved false. In councils at Fort Laramie and Fort Atkinson, in 1851, the federal government began to assign the plains tribe's large tracts of land, also known as reservations, with definite boundaries. However, most Plain tribes, refused to restrict their movements to the reservations and continue to follow the migrating buffalo wherever they roamed. Warfare became inevitable as thousands of miners, cattlemen, and homesteaders began to settle on Native American lands. Sporadic outburst of fighting between U.S. troops and Plains people were characterized by brutal episodes. The Colorado militia massacred an encampment of Cheyenne women, children, and men at Sand Creek, Colorado, in 1864. The tables were turned when an army column under Captain William Fetterman was wiped out by Sioux warriors in 1866 during the Sioux War. Another round of treaties attempted to isolate the Native Americans of the Plains on smaller reservations with promises of government support to be provided by federal agents, following these wars. Gold miners, however, refused to stay off Native Americans' lands if gold