Before the white man came, the vast region that is now the United States was inhabited by one million Indians, organized into six hundred distinct societies and scattered from the desolate ice wastes of the Far North to the hot swamps of the South; from the great forests of the East to the plains and deserts of the West. After four centuries of nearly continuous warfare the Indians were reduced numerically to less than four hundred thousand, their lands gone and their homes a series of reservations in, for the most part, the Western United States. This is the dramatic account of their wars of survival, illustrated throughout.