In his first annual address to Congress, President Chester A. Arthur (1830-1886; see entry in volume 3) acknowledged that the U.S. government's relations with Native Americans had been "a cause of trouble and embarrassment" since the beginning of the nation. At the time he spoke, Native Americans were seriously endangered as a people. War and disease had severely reduced their number. Land where the nomadic (roaming) Plains tribes hunted was being rapidly settled by whites, who were defended by the U.S. military in a series of wars on the the Plains (from Montana to Texas ). These battles raged during much of the last half of the twentieth century on the final area of frontier within the continental United States.

By the time the United States was founded with ratification of the Constitution in 1789, Americans were journeying beyond...