Few objects might appear more alien to traditional Native American cultures or more remote from Indian history than the steam locomotive. In nineteenth-century America, railroads symbolized the power of modern technology and the growth of non-Indian society. Railroads also traced the context in which Native life would be lived in the reservation period.

In 1880, if one were to superimpose a map of railroad lines over a map of North American Indian populations, the separation of most Native people from the bulk of the continent’s population would be clear. Native communities in present-day Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona lived beyond the reach of steel rails, while the Indians on both sides of the international border running west from Lake Superior to Puget Sound knew of the locomotive as only a distant rumor. In 1869, great celebration had accompanied the completion of a narrow line from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California, but little had been done in the depressionridden years immediately following to expand the total system. Even in the aftermath of the American Civil War (1861–65) and Canadian Confederation (1867), most Indian people, whether they were Creeks in Oklahoma, Assiniboines in Montana and Saskatchewan, or Ojibwas around the Great Lakes, had little contact with American and Canadian citizens.

In 1960, if one were to repeat the exercise of superimposing transportation lines on a map of Indian population, it would be clear how drastically Native life had been altered in the intervening eight decades. While many Indian people still lived in relative isolation in 1960, the non-Native majority in the populated regions of both the United States and Canada could reach most Indian communities and resources in a matter of hours. Rail lines, all-weather highways, and air transportation routes multiplied the available avenues of access. In the mid–twentieth century, most Na tive people outside the Far North could not avoid regular contact with non-Indians.

As telegraph and telephone communication supplemented face-to-face contact, the number and intensity of the cross-cultural meetings between Indians and outsiders increased. For government officials, missionaries, and business organizations, ready access to Indian people meant they could devise uniform approaches – or policies – to Native communities. Their ideas, their educational programs, and their economic interests crowded in on Native people and became an inescapable part of the Native environment.