One of the least-known consequences of water development in America is its impact on the Indians who hadn’t already succumbed to the U.S. Cavalry, smallpox, and social rot. Although many of the tribes had been sequestered on reservations that were far from the riverbottoms where they used to live, some tribes had been granted good riverbottom reservation land—either because the lands were prone to flooding, or because the government was occasionally in a generous mood.