It has long been the custom to attribute the dangerous restlessness of the Indians during and after the Civil War to the evil machinations of the Confederacy. It has been plausible to charge that agents of the South passed among the tribes, inciting them to outbreak by pointing out the preoccupation of the United States and the defencelessness of the frontier. Popular narratives often repeat this charge when dealing with the wars and depredations, whether among the Sioux of Minnesota, or the Northwest tribes, or the Apache and Navaho, or the Indians of the plains. Indeed, had the South been able thus to harass the enemy it is not improbable that it would have done it. It is not impossible that it actually did it. But at least the charge has not been proved. No one has produced direct evidence to show the existence of agents or their connection with the Confederacy, though many have uttered a general belief in their reality. Investigators of single affairs have admitted, regretfully, their inability to add incitement of Indians to the charges against the South. If such a cause were needed to explain the increasing turbulence of the tribes, it might be worth while to search further in the hope of establishing it, but nothing occurred in these wars which cannot be accounted for, fully, in facts easily obtained and well authenticated. Before 1861 the Indians of the West were commonly on friendly terms with the United States. Occasional wars broke this friendship, and frequent massacres aroused the fears of one frontier or another, for the Indian was an irresponsible child, and the frontiersman was reckless and inconsiderate. But the outbreaks were exceptional, they were easily put down, and peace was rarely hard to obtain. By 1865 this condition had changed over most of the West. Warfare had become systematic and widely spread. The frequency and similarity of outbreaks in remote districts suggested a harmonious plan, or at least similar reactions from similar provocations. From 1865, for nearly five years, these wars continued with only intervals of truce, or professed peace; while during a long period after 1870, when most of the tribes were suppressed and well policed, upheavals occurred which were clearly to be connected with the Indian wars. The reality of this transition from peace to war has caused many to charge it to the South. It is, however, connected with the culmination of the westward movement, which more than explains it.