Lithograph entitled: "The Prairie Hunter. One rubbed out!'. Manifest Destiny had serious consequences for Native Americans, since continental expansion for the United States took place at the cost of their occupied land. Manifest Destiny was a justification for expansion and westward movement, or, in some interpretations, an ideology or doctrine that helped to promote the process of civilization. The age of Manifest Destiny came to be associated with extinguishing American Indian territorial claims and removing them to reservations and to regarding the natives as "savages".