Policy of Native Americans during the 19th century?

The central thrust of the policy was to sell the land to pay off the Civil War debt, and this was done after first "liberating" the lands from the Indians. Occasionally, the Indians won one (Red Cloud's War comes to mind), but inevitably the whites outnumbered Native Americans and outgunned them. The one policy change was that Congress eventually declined to consider Indian tribes separate nations. It also decided that Indian tribes could not own the land because Indian culture did not "improve" it. Both of these changes made it much easier to move the Indians onto reservations and confiscate the land for white use.