Final answer:
Donna Akers describes the United States government's nineteenth-century view of Native American territory as a landscape to be controlled, with policies focused on removal, acquisition, and forced assimilation of Native peoples. Governments aimed to convert Native Americans to Euro-American cultural norms, often violating treaties and undermining Native sovereignty.
Step-by-step explanation:
Historian Donna Akers describes the United States government's perspective of Native American territory in the nineteenth century as exploitative and marked by policies aimed at removing Native Americans from their ancestral lands to make room for Anglo expansion. This view is supported by evidence, such as Helen Hunt Jackson's influential work, A Century of Dishonor, which criticized the US government for its numerous treaty violations and injustices towards Native populations. The federal government, initially through removal policies and later through assimilation efforts, viewed tribal lands as areas to be acquired and Indigenous peoples as groups to be civilized according to Euro-American standards, which included individual land ownership and Christian values.
The push for assimilation was evident with policies that prohibited traditional religious practices, transformed land use away from communal hunting and fishing, and encouraged Native Americans to adopt an American appearance and language. The goal of the US government was to assimilate Native Americans into the American society, often at the cost of their cultural identity and sovereignty. The federal government's policies evolved throughout the 19th century, leading to the Indian Wars, the establishment of the reservation system, and finally, the late 1880s shift towards Americanization in an effort to erode Native culture and sovereignty even further.