Gregory Smoak

reaches its zenith after the American Civil War in this period that we think of as the classical period of the Indian Wars, which stretches from even before the Civil War, but really after the Civil War up to 1886 when Geronimo surrenders at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona.

That ends the

armed resistance to this system.

I mean, there's- And people then confined on reservations.

Well, this is all linked to transforming Native people.

making them essentially disappear.

And I say that very intently, that going back even into the colonial period, and if we think of British colonialism as a basis for the United States, obviously there are other colonial powers, the French and the Spanish and so on, but British colonialism has the greatest impact on the creation of American federal Indian policy.

It is a centralized policy, and it really doesn't have a place for Native people within Euro-American society.

The Indian Removal Act illustrates this.

The idea was to move people from these areas.

The argument in humanitarian terms is we're going to move them out of the way where they'll be free of the vices and the problems of white society, where then they can slowly assimilate.

Even before the Removal Act, though, there were provisions and treaties to

provide farming implements to people, even to the Cherokees who got most of their diet from farming.

The idea is we're gonna civilize them by making them farmers.

Well, that policy, I mean, that kind of idea of transforming native people is a constant.

It becomes incredibly intense

after the American Civil War, when assimilation becomes the policy of the federal government.

And controversially, some people argue that it is not a policy of genocide, but arguably, it is.

If we define genocide as making a group, a group of people, disappear as a distinguishable group, absolutely.

The Dawes Act that you mentioned in 1887