In 1851, Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act, which organized the western tribes of Native Americans into reservations. These reservations fenced in the Natives on federally protected land, which was supposed to protect them from whites moving west, but in practice offered little protection. The reservations continued to get smaller and smaller as more pressure was put on them by the exploding white population surging westward. The act set the precedent for Native American reservations that still exist today.

Backround

By the 1850s the United States government had adopted assimilation and removal as a solution to the encroachment of Native American lands by white spectators, traders and settlers.