The westward expansion of the United States went hand in hand with the reduction and sometimes elimination of the indigenous people. No sugarcoating it. This was not the sort of ideological hate-fueled genocide the Nazis tried to carry out against the Jews. For the Europeans, the natives were simply in the way. They feared and hated the natives until they had swept them away, and then mythologized them as noble savages and eventually named sports teams after them.
