Although Indian lands were paid for with hard cash and services provided by the U.S. government, it was always for pennies per acre, backed by the threat of removal at the point of bayonets, sabers and guns wielded by government troops and violent militias. Native peoples who bowed to government demands soon learned that federal treaties rarely lived up to their promises.

Raw Deal traces the heroic efforts of the Indians to retain their homeland through centuries of warfare and exploitation. From the first people to inhabit the Upper Great Lakes 13,000 years ago, Raw Deal ranges across the centuries in the confrontation between Native peoples and the hard-luck immigrants of Europe, who came flooding across the ocean, eager to get their share in a dog-eat-dog world.