"Winning the West-The Army in the Indian Wars..." Topic

….1865–1890

"Perhaps because of a tendency to view the record of a military establishment in terms of conflict, the U.S. Army's operational experience in the quarter century following the Civil War has come to be known collectively as the Indian Wars, although those inhabitants of America described by the catchall name of Indian did not have anything like a monolithic culture or society. Previous struggles with various Indian tribes, dating back to colonial times, had generally been limited as to scope and opponent (the Pequot war in New England that virtually exterminated that tribe being one of the more notable
exceptions) and took place in a period when the Indian could withdraw or be pushed into vast reaches of uninhabited and as yet unwanted territory to the west. By 1865 this safety valve was fast disappearing; routes of travel and pockets of settlement had multiplied across the
western two-thirds of the nation, and as the Civil War closed Americans in greater numbers and with greater energy than before resumed the quest for land, gold, commerce, and adventure that had been largely interrupted by the war…"
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