...[T]he real power to dispose of the Indians' lands remained with the state governments, and they were adamant for removal. These governments, in the early 19th century, passed laws that "legalized" the eradication of the Indian communities and opened their lands to settlers. Such legislation even denied the Indians any right of appeal by depriving them of standing in court.

Powerful men, representing powerful interests in the roads and canals that did so much to make New York the Empire State, systematically dispossessed the Oneida and the Seneca nations of their vast inheritance. To drive home the point that influential men were the guilty parties, Hauptman lavishes his pages with their faces, where they scrutinize the reader as if from a prisoner's dock. These men came from the ranks of New York's leading families and patriots. They carried names like Schuyler, Ellicot, Jay, Fulton, De Witt, Van Rensselaer, Livingston, Clinton, Van Buren, Kirkland, Benson, Ogden, and Porter. They came from all parties: Federalist, Jeffersonian Republican, Democratic, and Whig; they were Congregationalists, Presbyterians, even Hicksite Quakers. They had overlapping interests in the development of canals, cities, and colleges. And they acted illegally, Hauptman insists, in clear violation both of constitutional provisions and federal statutes that made diplomacy with Indian nations a matter of federal, not state, authority. Federal officials were aware of the violations, but did little more than lob an occasional warning at New York's "nefarious" developers (to quote one of their favorite epithets).

"It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habitating so closely in these schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared towards the FINAL SOLUTION OF OUR INDIAN PROBLEM."

Over the whole 100 or so years of the residential school system, 40% (50,000) of the native kids that entered this system NEVER GOT OUT ALIVE. The death rate remained consistent over the whole time and across the system. This didn't just happen in distant past. The residential school system was only abolished in 1984 and the cover up is still going on.

In Sharp Knife's [Andrew Jackson's] first message to his Congress, he recommended that all these Indians be removed westward beyond the Mississippi. "I suggest the propriety of setting apart an ample district west of the Mississippi...to be guaranteed to the Indian tribes, as long as they shall occupy it."

Although enactment of such a law would only add to the long list of broken promises made to the eastern Indians, Sharp Knife was convinced that Indians and whites could not live together in peace and that his plan would make possible a final promise which never would be broken again. On May 28, 1830, Sharp Knife's recommendations became law.

Two years later he appointed a commissioner of Indian affairs to serve in the War Department and see that the new laws affecting Indians were properly carried out. And then on June 30, 1834, Congress passed An Act to Regulate Trade and Intercourse with the Indian Tribes and to Preserve Peace on the Frontiers. All that part of the United States west of the Mississippi "and not within the States of Missouri and Louisiana or the Territory of Arkansas" would be Indian country. No white persons would be permitted to trade in the Indian country without a license. No white traders of bad character would be permitted to reside in Indian country. No white persons would be permitted to settle in the Indian country. The military force of the United States would be employed in the apprehension of any white person who was found in violation of provisions of the act.

Before these laws could be put into effect, a new wave of white settler swept westward and formed the territories of Wisconsin and Iowa. This made it necessary for the policy makers to shift the "permanent Indian frontier" from the Mississippi River to the 95th meridian.

To justify these breaches of the "permanent Indian frontier," the policy makers in Washington invented Manifest Destiny, a term which lifted land hunger to a lofty plane. The Europeans and their descendants were ordained by destiny to rule all of the Americas. They were the dominant race and therefore responsible for the Indians—along with their lands, their forests, and their mineral wealth. Only the New Englanders, who had destroyed or driven out all their Indians, spoke against Manifest Destiny.

Sherman and General Phillip Sheridan were associated with the statement that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." The problem with the Indians, Sherman said, was that "they did not make allowance for the rapid growth of the white race" (Marszalek, p. 390). And, "both races cannot use this country in common" (Fellman, p. 263).

Sherman's theory of white racial superiority is what led him to the policy of waging war against the Indians "till the Indians are all killed or taken to a country where they can be watched." As Fellman (p. 264) writes:

Accordingly, Sherman wrote to Grant: "We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children." Writing two days later to his brother John, General Sherman said: "I suppose the Sioux must be exterminated . . ." (Fellman, p. 264).

This was Sherman's attitude toward Southerners during the War for Southern Independence as well. In a July 31, 1862 letter to his wife (from his Collected Works) he wrote that his purpose in the war was: "Extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the [Southern] people." His charming and nurturing wife Ellen wrote back that her fondest wish was for a war "of extermination and that all [Southerners] would be driven like the Swine into the sea."

With this attitude, Sherman issued the following order to his troops at the beginning of the Indian Wars: "During an assault, the soldiers cannot pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age. As long as resistance is made, death must be meted out . . ." (Marszalek, p. 379).

Most of the raids on Indian camps were conducted in the winter, when families would be together and could therefore all be killed at once. Sherman gave Sheridan "authorization to slaughter as many women and children as well as men Sheridan or his subordinates felt was necessary when they attacked Indian villages" (Fellman, p. 271). All livestock was also killed so that any survivors would be more likely to starve to death.

Sherman was once brought before a congressional committee after federal Indian agents, who were supposed to be supervising the Indians who were on reservations, witnessed "the horror of women and children under military attack." Nothing came of the hearings, however. Sherman ordered his subordinates to kill the Indians without restraint to achieve what he called "the final solution of the Indian problem," and promised that if the newspapers found out about it he would "run interference against any complaints about atrocities back East" (Fellman, p. 271).

The aboriginal demographic and political renaissance in the second half of the century has not only upset everyone's suppositions, it has also led to a rewriting of history. In Canada, there has been an outpouring of studies suggesting native problems, including health issues, were not so much a tragic accident of history as the consequence of deliberate white man's policies.

In Medicine That Walks, Maureen Lux, a post-doctoral student, says Canadian plains tribes probably held their own against infectious disease until they were reduced to poverty and squalor in the aftermath of the treaty signings. Only then were they overcome by tuberculosis and other diseases of the poor.