After the civil war, native americans were relocated to reservations primarily because

President Andrew Jackson in the year 1830, created The Indian Removal Act, a very shrewd legal action, which gave President Jackson the power to make treaties with all Mississippi tribes, and thus had to surrender their vast ancestral lands, in exchange for small lands west of the river. Then, in 1851 The Indian Appropriations Act was approved by the government and relocated in Oklahoma by force to the native peoples, to even smaller lands, that are now called Reserves. Many treaties to reclaim their lands have failed and the lives of indigenous peoples continue to be severely affected.