This collection of fourteen case studies by leading historians and other experts examines the impact of white settlement, and especially of government policy and actions, on the economic, political, religious, and social lives of the western American Indians from the mid-1850s.

Among the matters considered are treaty making, the Indian Wars, Grant's Peace Policy and the peacetime role of the military, reservation life, enforced allotment under the Dawes Act, the Indian Reorganization act, and the work of the Indian Claims Commission. The case-history approach makes it possible to be circumstantial and concrete in dealing with the major issues affecting the tribes of the Great Plains, the Southwest, and the Northwest.