Performance events are carriers of Native American cultural traditions and values. From the earliest European contact into this century, missionary and government efforts have been directed at eliminating performance in order to destroy Indian cultures and effect assimilation of Native peoples into Western customs and religions. From the first Spanish contact in the sixteenth century, efforts to Christianize Indians have forced alterations in or destruction of traditional performances. In 1646, the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony drew up rules prohibiting curing ceremonies among the Indians they converted.

But the major efforts at purging Indians of their traditional ways were carried out in the nineteenth century, when by 1887 all of the extant tribes except the Papago had been brought under the reservation system. The agents, in virtual dictatorial control of the reservations, were to a large extent military men, and they in turn were influenced by missionaries as well as non-Indians who wanted land and mineral and water rights.