Having gotten the easy part out of the way, it's also instructive to point out that Native-Americans themselves (the Sioux, especially) perpetrated a lot of these same atrocities on other Native-Americans. And if you don't trust me, here are a few receipts.
"One would think that (after having watched the movie, 'Dances with Wolves') the Sioux were a peace-loving group of people who only fought when their enemies, in this case the Pawnees and the whites, pushed them to the brink. The fact is that the Sioux were the most numerous and powerful tribe on the northern plains, and they thought nothing of removing other Indians from their traditional territories by force." James Welch (a person who is half Native-American himself and a strong advocate for his people) from "Killing Custer", 1994.
"Those lands once belonged to the Kiowas and Crows (he also could have added the Pawnees, Mandans, Hidatsas, Iowas, and Omahas but, yes, their treatment of the Crows and Kiowas was particularly heinous), but we whipped those nations out of them, and in this we did what the white men do when they want the lands of Indians." Black Hawk, a Lakota Sioux warrior, 1875
I include these passages not to throw shade at the Lakota or to let the U.S. government off the hook. I'm only trying to add what I always try to add; context and perspective. The truth of the matter is that this was how nations were born in earlier centuries (one could also say that in certain cases it's happening as we speak - in the Middle East, for instance) and to only hold one group of people accountable for these sins of the father seems exceedingly unfair. There, I said it.
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