Before the Civil War the federal government had typically negotiated treaties with various tribes, as though they were foreign "nations," but in its General Appropriations Act of 1871 the House of Representatives specified: "hereafter no Indian tribe or nation within the territory of the United States shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe, or power, with whom the United States may contract by treaty." The act facilitated a paternalistic approach to Native Americans designed to force them to give up their nomadic ways and to settle on isolated reservations, where they were expected to learn farming and take up "civilized" ways of life. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, one of the largest divisions of the huge Interior Department, also established special boarding schools that removed young Native Americans from their tribes, preventing them from learning their own religions and traditions while teaching...