I know it's a matter of convienience to dismiss the complaints of the indigenous peoples but they were tricked into trading valuable land for essentially worthless baubels, slaughtered if they resisted the movement of whites into their countries, slaughtered if they didn't resist, treatied with at the point of a gun, victimized by germ warfare with the deliberate spreading of polio into native communities, and on and on. No Europeans ever moved into an area that was not already the Country of an indigenous population. Does might make right in the taking of their land?
I think the real questions are, "Did Manifest Destiny, Devine Right or whatever other rational is given, really justify the slaughter of peoples, nations and tribes in order to steal their land? And if land is stolen does the weaker party have a right to have their land given back? Does time transfer the rights to the land that was taken from decimated peoples to the decendants of the victors?"
Civilization happens. Some Europeans were similarly slaughtered by other superior tribes in ancient times. Notably the original inhabitants of England were conquered and overrun by Anglo-Saxon tribes from Germany-Holland. This has happened throughout history. You cannot just blame European people for this. Every region in the world has experienced this.
AFter the mid 1600s (when most of the Eastern Indians died from Old World diseases) Indian power was broken and the white folk got the upper hand. At that point most Indians became professional meat hunters. Still, the problem with disease lingered and their very high infant mortality rate was finally recognized by Jefferson, et al.
The impetus behind the "reservation system" was the need to find a place where Indians could live separate from Old World people so that they could survive. Initially what is now Indiana was selected as a site for a very large reservation. This was later changed to Wisconsin, and finally Oklahoma.
Among others, the Kickapoo Indians were in the lead for the evacuation of Indian people from the East to a safe place in the West.
Modern medicine makes it possible for Indians to live off the reservation.
That's ignorant too. The Pilgrims settled where they did because a year or two before an epidemic had completely wiped out the tribe that had lived there...except for this guy named Squanto. The land was empty and uninhabited.
Early English settlers treated indian tribal leaders as nobles...ones they might fight with, as they would in Europe, but as nobles. Pocahontas went back to England as a lady and the wife of John Rolf...not as some sub-human.
That myth was debunked. There was no germ theory at the time, so no one would have been aware of the concept of spreading germs as a weapon of war.
Legally speaking it would be difficult to determine exactly which Indians "owned" which land, as property rights and a governing body to divide keep track of them was, I gather, virtually unknown at the time. That doesn't make it right, and of course deliberately introducing diseases to the Indians was demonic. But settlers simply landing on the continental United States and setting up shope was not in and of itself a bad thing. It is also important to remember that many missionaries and evangelist were sent to the Indians by Christian denominations.
Don't forget the indians were warring and enslaving amongst themselves. Sacajawea was a Shoshone who was captlured at an early age by the Hidatsa indians and made a slave. Was it also right for the indians to confiscate land from each other? There is enough blame to go around to all cultures.