I think it “honors” the Indians.
YES INDIANS!
They are NOT “native Americans”. There was no “America” before white European settlers created it.
We WON the war for the land.
Another issue is indians had no common law among them or even within their tribes and nations. If they could take it and defend it it was theirs. They also had dynamic borders for their territory, hunting grounds, etc.
Both issues put them in conflict with people-from-outside-their tribe. Settling in ‘their territory’ was taken as an invasion into their tribal territory whether it was occupied or not. In some instances the indians had to attack settlers. Otherwise it would show weakness to competing indian tribes, lest they also invade their territory.
In such a lawless system annihilation, assimilation or accommodation were the result. Most American indians assimilated into American society. Accommodation/indian reservations were not available until the 1800s.