In the years following World War II, Adams lived and worked among Navajos and Hopis in a number of different capacities. As an archaeological explorer, an ethnologist, an interviewer for the Arizona Bureau of Ethnic Research, a livestock drive foreman, and—perhaps most importantly—a trader, he became aware of the myth of the Indian: a belief in "the Indian" as a kind of unitary, symbolic figure, who stood as the surrogate for hundreds of tribes, cultures, and languages spread across the American continent. In , Adams addresses the idea that "the Indian," as conceived by colonial powers and later by different postcolonial interest groups, was as much ideology as empirical reality. Adams surveys the policies of the various colonial and postcolonial powers, then reflects upon the great ideological, moral, and intellectual issues that underlay those policies.