The whole period that was westward expansion and the period of manifesting destiny was just a wild, ambitious, and risky time for America but also extremely cruel and undoubtedly unfair for the many groups of indigenous peoples. When looking at the thriving and giant indigenous populations and areas that were groups like Comancheria, and how America was willing and able to invade and push massive empires like this was just a sign of how strong and advanced the U.S. military was. This was also a sign of support from the U.S government and the support of the U.S. bureaucracy and how policy was a thing that was being easily changed and altered in favor of America and their ideas of conquering the West and “saving” it from the darkness and chaos that was in the west. We saw the iconic image that was made by John Gast that showed that very thought coming from America. It makes you look back at most of the huge court cases that involved indigenous peoples and you see that the government was changing and altering certain policies that were already established very easily, or on the other hand in most cases, the already established policies were mostly ignored. You could say that policy was structured always in favor of America and never of Native Americans. It was also very troubling to learn that these Indigenous group leaders did fight for their respective nations and people but were majorly having the entirety of the American government fight against them and cheat themselves out of having consequences. Another thing I learned throughout the week was that the California gold rush wasn’t so unclean of wronging native americans. I also thought the rush was very focused on just many European ranchers, miners, and prospectors and I never realized that whole indigenous groups were removed from their lands to make way for the rush. Also learning about the many different catholic and Christian missions that were made and were almost like camps to transform many natives to Christianity and away from their ways of life. It hits a bit close to home since, where I’m from in southern Arizona these missionaries are seen as beautiful works of art and places of worship, but when to stop to think that they were probably places and centers of oppression.