he Indian population had dwindled from over 1,000,000 when Columbus first landed here to less than half a million.
To understand why and how this took place one must look at how the white men viewed the Indian from the start. Clearly the Indian tribes were not an advanced society. They hunted with the old fashioned bow and arrow and still used primitive tools for survival. They were for the most part considered primitive savages. Further west the tribes were known to war against each other in the attempt to protect their land rights. They worshiped various gods and had never heard of Christianity. Perhaps a white man's desire to bring civilization to these people was a genuine desire to see their lives improved, at least to begin with, but eventually this desire gave way to greed for the land and its natural resources.
One popular method for getting the Indian off his land and taking it for themselves was for the white man to pit one tribe against the other. This was the case in Arizona when the government decided that it could use the land owned by the Navajo tribe. In 1864, Kit Carson, because of his reputation as an Indian fighter, was hired by the United States government and sent to remove the Navajo from
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