Frank Rzeczkowski’s book Uniting the Tribes brings a refreshing perspective to the much studied early reservation period on the Northern Plains. Utilizing meticulously researched archival materials, Rzeczkowski reveals the effects of reservation life on the emergence of a pan-Indian identity during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He dispels previous assumptions that such constructions only emerged off the reservation by stretching the origins of a Native collective political identity past the spatial confines of the boarding schools and the temporal limitations of the world wars. Instead, he argues that containment on reservations leveled the playing field on the Northern Plains, forcing both powerful and disadvantaged tribal groups to suffer under the same difficult political and economic situations caused by conquest and the encroachment of the United States...