In the review of the article “How the West was Lost” the author, William T. Hagan explains that in a short period of thirty-eight years between 1848 and 1886, Indians in the western United States lost their fight with the United States to keep their lands. While nothing in the article tells us who Hagan is, or when it was written, the central theme of the article is to inform us of how the Indians lost their lands to white settlers. I found three main ideas in the article that I feel Hagan was trying to convey to us. Hagan placed these events in geographic and chronological order first for the Plains Indians, then for the Western Indians. The first point he made was how westward expansion affected the Plains Indians. The Plains Indian tribes consisted primarily of Kiowa, Kiowa Apache, Comanche, Sioux, and Cheyenne. As white settlers made their way across the country conquering land, the Indians pushed back by raiding settlements and killing occasional settlers. More and more white settlers flocked to the West in search of gold and silver. When settlers entered the territories, large herds of buffalo were killed, most often just for fun. This had a negative effect on the Indians as they relied on the buffalo not only for food, but also for hides and blankets, as well as to make tepees. Another factor was the herds of ponies; the US Army often seized herds, and a herd of over a thousand was killed precisely so the Indians could not use them. Soldiers on patrol in the West continued to push the Indians away from their hunting and fishing grounds. The second point Hagan talked about in the article was the peace treaties. Most Indians have made… middle of paper… a revelation of the greed, greed and desire that dwell in humanity. It really makes you think that almost entire races of people were exterminated just for gold and land. This article by Hagen brought me back to awareness of how American Indians were treated. I'm a non-traditional student, so I've studied what happened to American Indians in other history classes, and I know a lot of the information in the article, even though I didn't know it happened in such a short amount of timeHagan's Article was fascinating from a white man's perspective, but as a student who likes history, I would like to study some of this information from the Indians' perspective. I'm not sure many of these types of articles exist; however, I would like to find out what made the Indians react and what they wanted to achieve.