It has long been argued that the process of western expansion helped form the American character. Such arguments hold that white Americans were hardened and strengthened as they moved westward across the continent, carving communities out of the wilderness. But it must be remembered that westward expansion had equally momentous consequences for the peoples who already occupied the land. These people, known as Indians, Native Americans, or American Indians, experienced the westward expansion of European and American settlers as a four-hundred-year assault on their culture, their land, and their very lives. In this assault, Europeans and Americans used war, enslavement, and disease to wrest control of the continent from its native inhabitants.

The Common Culture of Trade

The end result of the centuries-long conflict between whites and Indians was the devastation of traditional Native American culture. But in the middle...