Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas

This first book in a planned two-volume set examines how the policies of the federal government, violently enforced by its military, dispossessed American Indian nations of their homelands and caused population decline. Ostler (history, Univ. of Oregon; The Lakotas and the Black Hills) explores the interactions of specific American Indian nations with the U.S. government, showing that each relationship was unique. The common thread was that the government's endgame for all was the same. Throughout, the author tracks demographic data for individual nations, allowing readers to weigh the impact of specific policies or treaties. For example, the horrific impact of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 is apparent through the decline in the Cherokee population between 1832 and 1839; an era that saw their forced migration westward on the Trail of Tears. Ostler uses Bleeding Kansas on the eve of the Civil War as his stopping point. This is done to point out that while national attention was drawn to sporadic violence among whites in Kansas, far more Kanza people were suffering in the same region, but their plight was ignored.