There was also some hope to exploit [Native Americans]. According to the committee's report on Churchill (pp. 34, 37):
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There is no question that John Smith was brutal in his treatment of Indians and interested in having English settlers colonize New England. However, the evidence suggests that he viewed the native population as an important source of labor. As Salisbury explains, Smith "would use military repression in order to force the natives to work for their colonial masters." The evidence that Smith wanted to use Indians as a labor force contradicts Professor Churchill's contention that he wanted to see them wiped out.
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All true.
But by the post Civil War era Slotkin focuses on in "Gunfighter Nation", these dreams of enslavement were a thing of the forgotten past.
Westward expansion (as every school child used to know) was the battle cry and the native peoples were perceived as being an obstacle in need of quick and decisive removal.
Slotkin starts his work by examining the mythological assumptions tightly coiled about Frederick Jackson Turner's address to the World Columbian Exposition on July 12, 1893 titled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History."
Nearly all of our subsequent pop cultural notions about the West, and the native people's place in it (including the vanished Indian meme Dennis Claxton pointed out), can be found in this late 19th century speech.
.d.
--------- Folks, if you're like me, you're constantly running from Mexican bandits who're after that diamond you got hidden somewhere on your body.
Olly