I am looking for recommendations on American expansionism, manifest destiny, and specifically the experience of Native populations under the military and state of the USA. I don’t know the lay of the land when it comes to scholarly works on this topic.
For broader overviews that are not purely military focused but are nonetheless really fantastic for covering a lot of this history, I'd recommend some of these books.
Surviving Genocide: Native Nations from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas by Jeffrey Ostler
Violence Over The Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West by Ned Blackhawk
Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power by Pekka Hamalainen
The Comanche Empire also by Hamalainen is another good one
The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 by Richard White
For more specific military studies or overviews of certain conflicts, here are some other recommendations
War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the Mexican-American War by Brian DeLay
Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War by Lisa Brooks
West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 by Claudio Saint
Edit:
If you would like more recommendations - or had any specific topics you wanted to read about feel free to ask.
i liked dunbar-ortiz's indigenous history of the united states, i've used it for all my papers involving indigenous history i think it's an immediate overview - for instance she uses a lot of letters that you can then go and look up and go on google spirals for if you're interested. there's such a vast span of conflicts happening in different parts of territory at different times that if you want an in-depth look you have to look at national trends (like, post revolutionary war? what's going on in the u.s--> for instance handsome lake was a seneca (of the east coast haudenosaunee) prophet & religious leader but his societal reforms also coincided with the greater temperance (no alcohol) movement of the 19th century and greater religious revivalism of the burned over district (and was also happening like, during the course of his life time presidents are issuing bounties for indian scalps of all gender & ages essentially marking perceived non-combatants as targets to hunt for money from the government) most of my other resources involve language/boarding schools/witchcraft in seneca history & culture but dunbar-ortiz is a great first text into the subject early on --> "indigenous writers write back" iirc is a great one as a resource for preforming indigenous historiography. keep an eye out for weird old ethnographers / just be critical going into your sources and question what the author has to gain by explaining situations x way (especially if they're non-indigenous, what methodology are they using/how are they going about this topic? are they helping indigenous people? is it respectful? are they victims who are talked about as purely the past, or living people dealing w/ the repercussions of this long history scholars write on)
you could also check out AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, you'll probably find cool stuff. or like, just pick the area you live in and read the wikipedia for the tribal reservations in the area and you'll quickly run into "ah this is when they were held at gun point to move here" or something along the lines of forcible relocation / at least in my area but in other places there's a wide variety of stories of how they kept the land they did and then even bought land back from the united states or otherwise found a way to provide for themselves in relation to a colonial power.
my point is you don't have to look far to find immediate information surrounding facts about the land, you start asking more questions and you'll get more answers basically --> you can look up an indigenous nations website and usually they have a LOOOT of info right there that is their story / oral history now written. in my own scholarly work i prefer this (any history as recorded by indigenous peoples first > white ppl in power tbh). a lot of this history is kind of "squint at it from a couple different angles to make sure you got the right picture" in terms of intent and accuracy in cross-cultural contact on top of increasingly borderland conditions (esp on the east coast) but it's hard to hide the facts of a colonialist past (american expansionism really kicks into gear after the american revolution methinks) though the U.S has certainly tried
anyways, best of luck! take whatever hits for you and maybe pick up a new book!
I would highly recommend An American Genocide by Benjamin Madley. It is an absolutely groundbreaking book that documents the genocide of Native people in California during the gold rush from 1846 to 1873. He provides an exhaustively detailed, year-by-year account of the systematic slaughter and enslavement of tens of thousands of Native people and the involvement of state and federal officials. And he documents every known killing and massacre in nearly 200 pages of appendices that are available for free on the Yale University Press website.