often the federal military presence happened because settlers would encroach on native lands and then plea to the federal government for support when they bit off more than they could chew.

This is an often forgotten element of Laura Wilder's famous frontier novel "Little House on the Prairie". The Wilder family, and a number of other settler families, were attempting to squat Osage Nation land, their belief was that while their actions were technically illegal the US government would eventually take their side and let them keep the land.

Turns out they were wrong, their presence caused political tensions with the Osage and other plains tribes so the US Army was sent to evict them.

Also worth noting, Laura Wilder's books were just meant as personal memoirs, she was more known in her life for writing gardening and cooking guides. Her frontier stories were largely promoted by her daughter Rose Wilder Lane who was a hardcore libertarian and friend of Ayn Rand, and openly promoted the books as a showcase of the nobility of frontier life.

once you get the ball of capitalist social relations rolling downhill, it can be hard to stop. it's a self-reinforcing system: steal peoples land, make them poor, tell them they can stop being poor by owning land so they go steal other people's land that aren't under the regime of private property and the state.

some day this will run out of steam. I hope.