There are three reasons why it is easy to overlook the effectiveness of public administration in Indian affairs. The first reason is that evaluations of Indian policy and administration in American history have a tendency to focus on the problematic nature of the values and purposes driving government policy. The era's social policies ranged from paternalistic to culturally destructive, and they deserve criticism. Yet administrators often made progress, as they defined it; the era's administrators effectively pursued the goals they set for themselves. And we must remember that “civilization” and other social goals were never the primary purpose of U.S. Indian policy. When evaluations focus exclusively on social policy issues, the effectiveness of agents administering treaties, factories, and economic regulations are obscured. The same is true of focusing on warmaking and military conflict for evidence of state-building and state effectiveness – warmaking, conflict, and extermination were never first goals of the American state. Then, as now, they were rhetorically attractive at times and served in practice as a backup, a deterrent, a last measure. The state's primary goal in the era of the factory system was ordering and managing peaceful and economical continental expansion. Federal agents administering the treaty and factory systems in the early republic accomplished that goal with considerable success.