In order for railroad companies to finance rail construction and operation, they needed not only land grants from Congress but they also needed businesses and settlements of people living at the far reaches of the rail lines who needed shipments of goods. This shipping generated badly needed revenue. To persuade Americans to move West, railroads put out colorful brochures and posters designed to create the perception of a "civilized" Indian who no longer presented a threat to settlers. When the terms "civilized" and "Indian" were put together in a sentence, historically, this referred to the forced process of making Native peoples become more like Euro-American settlers.

In language that we might find distasteful today, a railroad promotion brochure claimed that the completion of the railroad would lead to the "early reduction of the military force on the frontiers, the avoidance of costly Indian wars, the cheapening of government transportation throughout the Northwest, and the permanent pacification of the Indians." This would save "several million dollars each year," according to the brochure.1

Constructing those railroads was as much the outcome of government policies as was the creation and dissolution of reservations. One of the many effective policies in transforming Native American lifeways was the General Allotment Act of 1887. Although tribes had already ceded enormous tracts of land, this law shrunk reservations much further, releasing nearly two-thirds of the so-called reserved native homeland to settlement between 1887 and 1934.2 The "opening" of this much land during the peak era of railroads was a significant factor enabling new businesses to flourish. Unfortunately, it was also a factor in driving native peoples into more impoverished living conditions.

It took until the middle of the twentieth century before tribal political resistance could begin to reverse some of this damage by founding commercial enterprises, organizing cultural revitalization programs, and launching homeland recovery projects.