u/Lanky_Chipmunk9158 — reddlx

Really random question but it revolves around the Civil War time period in the U.S. I’ve been reading this book called The Killer Angels which is a historical fiction about the Civil War and the book I just read before this was Empire of the Summer Moon which is about the Comanche. And the book I read before that was the Frontiersman. After reading these three books so far I keep having this question for some reason because I still feel like I’m not fully understanding the times and it is what was the U.S. was like regarding Natives during the Civil War times and what followed? What I mean is, what was the dynamic at this point? From what I can figure out from a google search the frontier wars ended around 1890 which is still a while past the Civil War. So from what I understand, by the the time the CW was going on, a lot of the north, south and east had been cleared of Native Americans but was the west still relatively open at this point? Could someone live in like Pennsylvania, fight in the war, live in communities surrounded by majority new Americans and then after the war travel out west and be in lands that are still completely run by Natives and void of anyone else but the few and far behind settlers? Could you travel from Kentucky to Wyoming or Montana and it be like two completely different worlds in reference to who lives there? I guess I’m just fascinated with the fact that while there could be a giant war in this country with up to 4 million American settlers all the while there was lands to the west that were still relatively untouched and still controlled by the Native populations. You watch movies like Hostiles where the civil war veterans are fighting in populated and serious battles against the Natives well after the war so can anyone explain this deeper?