The roots of present-day federal cultural resource protection statutes were planted in the culturally traumatic soils of late-nineteenth-century America. As introduced in Chapter 1, the late 1800s were a period of intense isolation and destruction for indigenous people, their land bases, traditions, and cultures. Federal policies aimed at assimilating indigenous people into so-called mainstream society shattered the integrity of reservations, families, and entire societies, resulting in the loss of millions of acres of tribal lands, generations of tribal and family connections, and ultimately, the abject failure of this draconian federal policy, even by the federal government’s own measure.