This article lays out U.S. Indian policy in the Great Plains during the twenty-five years after the Civil War by examining chronologically specific "players" that shaped and reshaped that policy: the U.S. Army, the President and Interior Department, Congress, religious organizations, whites in the Indian reform movement, settlers surging west, railroads, and the native nations of the Great Plains, particularly the Lakota. Into the narrative of this changing policy the experiences of the Eastmans are interjected, marked in italics, to illustrate how this changing colonial policy affected those being colonized.