The end of the Civil War did not mean peace. When the U.S. Army stopped fighting in the South in 1865, it simply turned its attention to the wars on the Great Plains against the Apaches, Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, and Lakotas. Government officials had already settled the question of whether or not Indians were equal to white men during the Civil War, when Santees were hanged, Navajos force-marched to Bosque Redondo, and Cheyennes massacred and mutilated. During the war, Americans saw Indians as enemies of the Republic; after the war, the government codified that perception.
